


Rinse and Repeat

by Hittosama



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Explicit Language, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Omnic Crisis, Slow Burn, Video Game level of violence, might diverge a bit from canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2019-11-15 16:21:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18076811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hittosama/pseuds/Hittosama
Summary: Two years into the Omnic Crisis, a small team of heroes was assembled under the protection of the United Nations to find a solution and put an end to the war.





	1. Jack

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!  
> Just a few warnings: I tend to write long fanfics and I usually take my time. Sadly, I don't have time anymore to provide a chapter per week due to work and an unhealthy amount of time spent playing Overwatch. I'll try to stick to a 2 chapters per month schedule, that should be about 16K words per month. I intend to cover the second part of the Omnic Crisis, so from the formation of the Special Task Force until the creation of Overwatch.  
> Also, English is my second language so I'm sorry if I didn't catch every mistakes during my numerous edits. I do speak French though so those parts will be flawless, and I'll rely on my friends for Spanish, German and Arabic if need be.  
> I hope you enjoy this story!

_Rinse and Repeat_  
Chapter 1  
Jack

 

A dog was barking somewhere in the neighborhood, Mr.Schleiker’s by the sound of it. The dog was an old mutt, rescued from a bad home, with half an ear missing and a broken tail. Mr.Schleiker had given her all the love he could in his retired days, but the dog still had nightmares and barked at odds hours, day and night, as if to scream away the fear.  
The dog hadn’t waken Jack up though. Jack had been awake for hours, if he had slept at all. At some point, he had unplugged the digital alarm taunting him on Vincent’s side of the bed – that was okay, tomorrow, no, today was Sunday, Vince could sleep in and Jack would reprogram the thing before Monday. Before work. Jack didn’t have to get up early to go to work.  
Today, Sunday, marked his seventeenth day since his release from the Program. Not the end of it, mind you, his _release_. He had failed, somewhere, didn’t perform well enough for them, didn’t get high enough grades for them, wasn’t good enough for them. Where had he failed? He would never know. Everything from the Program was classified. He had failed so they wouldn’t tell him anything, wouldn’t let him try again and do better. There was no second chance with them. Get it on the first try or fail. Leave. Die.

It made sense, when the frustration let him think for a second. They were right, of course there was no second try on this one. They didn’t have the luxury. Failing meant losing people, losing territory, losing the war. After two years of try and errors, they had to win. That was the point of the Program: to create soldiers who could win, by being stronger and smarter and better than the Omnics.

Jack was none of that.

 

Jack sighed angrily. Vince’s soft, regular breathing answered in the silence of their bedroom before the dog barked again two streets down the road. Jack wanted to scream away his frustration. What else could he do anyway? He couldn’t tell anyone anything. He had just disappeared one day after a quick phone call to his boyfriend and parents, telling them he’d go dark for a while, and he had reappeared six months later, dropping his bag on the porch of his house and waiting there until 7PM because he had lost his key somewhere like the idiot he was. Vince had come back from work. Jack had expected him to be furious, but Vince had just smiled and hugged him and cried on his shoulder. Jack should have felt relieved too, seeing and touching and kissing his boyfriend of four years. He hadn’t. He had felt like a fraud, a good-for-nothing, a failure, and he had spent the next ten minutes apologizing for everything without meaning it. He had to apologize for disappearing, right? For not giving news, certainly, even if he could not have done so anyway – it was all the same for Vince, probably. It had sucked.

 

It still sucked seventeen days later. Jack was home, great, but he had nothing to do, just sit there and wait for his orders. They’d come, right? He had been released but not decommissioned. They’d call him back and send him somewhere where he could be useful – or die trying.

 

Jack pushed the blanket and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face with his hands. He had to get out so he stood up and grabbed his phone, then his T-shirt and sweatpants in the laundry basket in the corner of the room. He was searching in the dark for socks in his almost empty drawer when he heard noises behind him – bed-sheets. Something clicked and the light made Jack blink. He kept his back to his boyfriend.  
“Jack?” asked Vincent, his voice still sleepy.   
“Sorry I woke you up, Babe,” Jack apologized, trying to sound cheerful.   
“’s’alright,” Vince mumbled. “Come back to bed,” he added, pleading, worried. “We’ll mess around?”  
Jack closed his eyes for a second. The only kind of fuck he wanted was in “get the fuck out of there.”   
“Maybe later,” he replied, standing up, socks in hand.   
“Did you sleep?”

“Yeah,” Jack lied, “like a baby.”

There was a second of silence. Then: “Are you all right?”  
The question pissed Jack off to no extend. No, he wasn’t, he wanted to scream. What the hell was he doing here, in fucking Nowhere, Indiana, playing husband, doing the laundry, cooking meals, staring at the front door all day, his phone right next to him in case someone came, someone called. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Would it kill them to tell him what was going on? He’d been useful before the Program, for fuck’s sake, so why didn’t they send him back on the front to do his goddamn job?   
Jack inhaled, held, exhaled.   
“Time for my morning run, is all.”

“It’s 4AM, Jack,” Vince replied – he kept his watch on him all the time.

“Wanna come?” Jack tried to joke, tried to smile. “You’re starting to get a dad bod’, sitting all day, Babe.”

Vincent didn’t smile, didn’t laugh. He looked worried when Jack turned to look at him, and it hit him like a wall of concrete in the face.

“You gotta talk to someone, Jack,” Vincent said, trying to catch Jack’s eyes but he looked elsewhere. “If it’s not me, it’s okay, I understand, but you can’t stay like that...”

“I’m fine,” Jack interrupted.

“You’re not,” Vincent said louder, “and you need help.”

“I-I’m just on leave,” Jack tried. “It’s gonna get better when I get my orders.”

Vincent rubbed his face.

“Isn’t it a good time to quit?” he asked, visibly frustrated.

“We’re at war.”

“Two years, you fought,” Vincent reminded him, speaking louder. “Two year, I worried. And you disappeared for six months, Jack, six fucking months where I didn’t sleep because I didn’t know if you were even alive! And now you’re on leave,” he continued with air quotes, “but you don’t act like you’re on leave. You look like a lion in cage and you can’t wait to get back on the front. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“The fuck is wrong with me?” Jack replied, screaming too. “I’m a soldier, I’ve been for eight years! You knew it when we met and I told you from the beginning I wouldn’t quit!”

“The situation has changed, Jack!”

“Yeah, there’s a war going on! I’m not going to quit now, my country needs me!”

“Sure does,” Vince snorted.

“Fuck you,” Jack said before Vincent could continue.

And he left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

 

It was cold enough outside for his breath to be visible, but Jack didn’t care. He didn’t feel the cold, he was too angry for that. Jack’s phone vibrated in his hand and he saw Vince was calling him. Jack was tempted to just throw the damn thing somewhere but he had to keep it with him, just in case they’d call – at zero four hundred, what a joke, but a joke he desperately needed to believe. So he ignored Vince’s call, slipped the phone in his pocket and ran. He ran through the suburb of Bloomington, with the nice little houses for the perfect American families – very few non-Caucasian in this part of town –, then aimed for the center of town. Once there, he kept running to the university. Some lights were still on in the futuristic-looking buildings of the laboratories. Considering the restrictions, either someone was going to pay for that, or they had the authorization to work all night, which wouldn’t surprise Jack. The university had a contract with the military to research the Omnics, that was why armored vehicles and armed soldiers were standing guard all around the campus. Jack didn’t know any of them so he stood clear from them. He had asked to meet the Colonel in charge of the temporary military base North of Bloomington, but there had been no answer yet. He didn’t have high hopes anyway. He was a field medic specialized in traumas, not the kind of doctor they needed around. Besides, he didn’t want to stay in Bloomington, even if that meant going home every evening to be with his boyfriend and having lunch every Sundays with his parents, or Vince’s. There was a war going on, a war they were losing. Jack couldn’t stay home like a coward.

 

Jack sped up. He left the campus behind him and quickly reached Griffy Lake. He followed the 37 to Dolan but jumped into the forest on a whim, avoiding civilization, avoiding thinking. He found himself at Lake Lemon in less time than he was used to and got a bit disoriented. He slowed down a little, running around the lake until the first signs of the sun appeared in the east, then he turned South-West and aimed for Bloomington. He was about to meet the Interstate 69 when he figured he didn’t want to go home, he didn’t want to see Vince at all, so he crossed the Interstate and aimed for Ellettsville, then West Reeves Road. He took a shortcut by the fields, following the high voltage power lines until West Ratliff Road, east again for about a hundred meters and there he was, north of the road, after a short dusty driveway, back at his parents’. Jack slowed down until he reached the trees marking the limit of the property than walked across the grass, going around the hangar. Barks alerted him he had been noticed and Jack called for Rusty and Peggy. The two dogs recognized his voice and came running, jumping around him, squealing in delight of seeing an old friend. Jack knelt to greet and pet the dogs, happy to see them too. He got his share of licking and excited nose bumps before he heard the front door squeak. There was his mom, a cup of coffee in hand, her hair loose on her shoulders for once. Jack got up and aimed for the house, the dogs still in the middle of his legs at every step.

“Hey mom,” Jack said when he arrived on the porch. He reached for her to kiss her on the cheek but she avoided him at the last second.

“You wanna kiss your mom with that mouth?” she asked on a joking tone. “I saw you French kissing the dogs, and they lick their butts all day.”

“Fair enough,” Jack admitted.

“Go wash up,” she added, patting him on the shoulder, “I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

Jack left his running shoes out and obeyed, the dogs still on his heels as he went to the downstairs bathroom. He was greeted in the kitchen by the promised cup of coffee, but first Jack put a kiss on his mom’s cheek before sitting down at the table, the dogs on either side of him. The coffee was strong and bitter, perfect for the day.

 

Helen Morrison was just short of her fiftieth birthday but barely looked forty. She was on the tall side with a solid frame that she took good care of. As a vet in a semi-rural area, she sometimes had to lift heavy weights, so she made sure to be able to. Jack loved spending time with her running or at the gym, then indulging themselves with a well-earned patisserie at their favorite cafe in town. They hadn’t done that yet since he had come back, and he missed it, he realized as he sipped his coffee.

“So,” Helen said as she sat at the table, “what’s going on?”

“Do I need a reason to visit my parents?” Jack asked back to avoid the question.

“At 7AM on a Sunday morning, there’s probably a reason.”

_Touché_. Jack put his mug on the table as Rusty sat up and put his head on Jack’s lap. He started scratching the old dog behind the hears without really noticing it.

“Same old,” Jack admitted, a lump in his throat.   
“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”  
“All right,” Helen shrugged. “Did you hear about your cousin’s latest?” she continued, knowing fully it was useless to keep pushing Jack to talk if he wasn’t willing. Jack shook his head. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me,” she said on a conspiratorial tone, “but he was caught with Mrs. Johnson, in his car, by one of his colleagues no less.”

“Mrs. Johnson?” Jack repeated incredulously. “Our math teacher from high school?” His mom nodded. “Wow, but she’s like, fifty or something.”

“Got a problem with fifty-something women, son?” Helen asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Huh, no, they’re beautiful and wise and perfect, especially my mom,” Jack tried – Helen agreed. “But shit, Mrs. Johnson.”

“Hm hm.”

“Isn’t she married?”

“She is,” Helen replied excitedly. “And the best part is, it’s not the first time she fucks an old student of hers. Allegedly, of course.”

“Well, as long as they all are of legal age and willing, I mean, it’s really none of our business.”

“Yes but it’s still fun gossip,” Helen retorted. “Plus, imagine your aunt at the next family reunion: she’s going to be so pissed that her precious cop son screwed up! She already sees him sheriff, you know? God forbids, he’s an idiot.”

Jack smiled and let his mom talk about her old high school nemesis, Julia Green, born Morrison, her husband’s older sister, but didn’t say anything. If Justin had screwed up by shagging his former math teacher, where did that put Jack on the scale of Big Fuck Ups? Nobody in the family knew he had been released from the Program, or that he had been enrolled in the first place, but everybody knew he had come back, and leave didn’t last seventeen days, not during the war. The next family reunion would be fun indeed if he was still around for that. Between his inexplicable long leave and his boyfriend, Jack wasn’t sure Justin would be the talk of the family.

The third step from the bottom of the stairs cracked and Jack knew his dad was coming before he appeared. Henry was a big man, tall and with wide shoulders Jack had inherited, and with a bit of a belly that Jack hoped to never catch. Henry had decided to shave his head at the first sign of baldness, and had been rocking the style for fifteen years now, compensating his lack of hair by a big, well maintained beard that was definitely turning gray. He was two years younger than his wife, but looked older, probably because he was radiating less energy. Henry was someone calm and jovial, the kind of guy who liked to be Santa Claus for the family’s kids every Christmas and grill steaks outside on Sundays even in the dead of winter.

Henry put a kiss on the top of Jack’s head as he walked by to the coffee maker.   
“You two are going running?” he asked.

“It’s my day off,” Helen replied. “I’m not running on my day off. I’m going to sit on the couch and catch up on series all day.”

“Fair enough,” Henry chuckled as he came back to sit next to his wife, coffee in hand.

“Sounds good. Can I do that too?” Jack asked.

“Don’t you have to go to Vincent’s parents’ for lunch today?” his mom remembered. “We had you boys for lunch last week.”

“’m not feeling like it, honestly,” Jack grunted, a weight on his stomach. “They’re nice folks but, I don’t know, it’s exhausting.”

“That never changes,” Henry snorted. Helen slapped him gently on the arm. “What? I like your family just fine, but every Thanksgiving, I sit at their table and it’s just awkward. I’ve been your husband for twenty-six wonderful years and your dad still looks at me like I stole his daughter away.”

“Well you did.”

“They live on the opposite side of town,” Henry laughed. “It’s a twenty minutes drive, literally!”

“Just imagine how you’ll react the day Evie gets married,” Helen argued. “Tell me you’ll be totally fine with it.”

“I’ll be fine if they love each other,” Henry persisted. “All I want for my children is to be happy.”

Jack purposeful kept his mouth shut, just to avoid the subject of his happiness.

“You say that,” Helen continued, “yet you’re all stiff and formal with Vince when he comes for lunch.”

“I do not.”

“Yeah you do,” Jack intervened, feeling obligated to open his mouth for that.

“You see?” Helen added. “Jack came out ten years ago, Henry. It’s about time you get on board.”

“I’m one hundred percents on board!” Henry protested. “I punched that guy in the church’s parking lot because I’m on board!”

“You did that,” Jack remembered fondly. He had been seventeen at the time and couldn’t have cared less about the insult that good christian had spat at him after church, but his dad had felt obligated to do something. To be fair, Henry had not struggled much when Jack had come out. He had asked embarrassing questions and awkwardly encouraged his son but Jack had mostly good memories of it. Yet, Henry wasn’t really cordial with Vince, but Jack had just put it on personalities. Vince was usually guarded around people he didn’t know well, and he could come off as cold and haughtily. He had never really managed to break the ice with Jack’s dad, but it was the first time Jack was hearing that his dad had trouble getting along with anybody. “So what gives, old man?” Jack teased.

“Nothing!” Henry said. Helen gave him a doubtful look behind her cup of coffee. “I just – he doesn’t look at Jack like Jack looks at him, and it rubs me off,” he admitted, holding his hands up in sign of surrender, “that’s it, I said it, sue me.”

“What?”

“Hm, now that you say it...” Helen thought out loud.

“Care to explain?” Jack asked, a bit lost.

“He’s –“ Henry started, looking elsewhere, “how to put it? I feel like, and it’s my own opinion based on my flawed perception, that, sometimes, you look at him like he’s the Chosen One and I don’t feel that, that _vibe_ coming from him too.”

“Vince is a lot less open about his feelings than me,” Jack countered. “He doesn’t show them as easily, is all. Doesn’t mean he loves me less.”

“I know,” Henry said. “It’s just – I want my kids to be happy with the loving partner of their choice, so of course I’m going to be a bit… I want to protect my kids, that’s all.”

“You know I’m in the army and we’re at war, right?” Jack joked to lighten the mood.

“Emotionally,” Henry added. “There’s nothing I can do to protect you outside,” he continued, gesturing to designate the world, “but if either you or Evie bring back home an asshole, I’m going to punch him, or her, in the face.”

“Or not, to avoid another lawsuit,” Helen said.

“Or not,” Henry agreed, crossing his arms, “but I’m going to be really mean to them.”

“Huh,” Jack hesitated, amused, “thanks, dad.”

“You’re welcome, son. So, who wants eggs? I’m starving.”

 

Henry started making breakfast: powdered eggs, fake bacon and milk-less pancakes. Jack wolfed it down, listening to the conversation his parents were having regarding the weather and the retrofit to make on the tractors now that the GPS satellites were not under control anymore. Last year, the surveillance drone had been taken by the military because they feared the Omnic would use it to spy on the campus, and now there were more restrictions. Between that, the wacky weather and the fuel shortages, it would be another poor year for the farm.

 

Peggy got up and bounced to the stairs to greet Evie, still in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes, her hair a mess. She was twelve, small and skinny for her age. She had long, straight blond hair and the prettiest blue eyes you could wish for, and smart with that. She was at that awkward age when you feel different and misunderstood by everybody, so nowadays she usually sat somewhere and judged you in silence, but Jack still remembered the witty kid she had been not so long ago, jumping everywhere and riding her bike with her friends until sundown. He loved her despite the fourteen years gap between them. As a teen himself, he hadn’t really paid attention to the new baby, he had had his own problems and life, but she had always been eager to see him and spend time with him when he came back from his rotation. That’s how he got to know his sister: four months at a time over eight years. He and Vince would take her camping or fishing, riding horses and dirt-bikes, swimming at the pool or at the river. It had been a lot of fun until puberty hit her.

 

“Hi Midget,” Jack greeted his sister with a grin. She replied by punching his shoulder – that made Jack laugh – and she sat down at her chair, probing her knees high again her chest. “Slept well?”

“You woke me up,” Evie grunted.

“It’s eight thirty.”

“It’s Sunday,” she replied with a snarl.

“So much love, so early,” Helen sighed. “God, I’m so happy to be a single child.”

“Big families are fun,” Henry retorted, already serving a big plate and orange juice to his daughter.

“Well pregnancy isn’t,” Helen added. “I hated every minute of it, and everyone around was like ‘oh this is so wonderful, the miracle of life, you’re glowing’. Yeah, because I was always sweating and huge and everything hurt and people kept touching my belly like I owed them or something. Urh, never again.”

“You were beautiful though,” Henry reassured her as he sat down.

“I remember the sweating and mood swings,” Jack commented.

“See?” Helen snorted, pointing at Jack. “He gets it. Thank you my love.”

“You’re very welcome, mother.”

Evie rolled her eyes.

“Well, to me, you were beautiful no matter what,” Henry insisted. “And the sex...” he added, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Ah yes, the sex was awesome,” Helen conceded.

“Gross,” Jack said, amused, while Evie made a face.

“Because buttsex isn’t?” Helen asked.

“Not if done right,” Jack answered back with a bright smile.

“Eeeeeew!” Evie squeaked. “It’s eight thirty in the morning! What’s wrong with you people?”

“We’re reaching out, Sweetie,” Helen said, patting Evie’s shoulder. “You’re at an age where you body changes and you discover things...”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Evie interrupted. “I have a phone, I’ll ask the Internet when, _and if_ , I want to know something, thank you very much.”

“Might not be a good idea,” Jack said.

“Definitely not a good idea,” Henry agreed. “I still remember all the porn I found when I was just looking at how to approach my gay son about safe sex. It will forever be burnt into my retinas.”

“Yeah, come to me if you have questions,” Jack chuckled.

“And what do you know about girls exactly?” Evie snorted.

Helen laughed.

“I’m a medic!” Jack replied, offended, as his mom apologized.

“You’re not a _real_ doctor,” Evie countered.

“I do way cooler stuff than doctors,” Jack argued, “and under fire. Look,” he added, getting his phone from his pocket. Five missed calls, the screen said as it lit up. Vince. Jack felt a ping of guilt mixed with anger. He removed the notifications anyway and searched for a particular picture of stitches he had done on Martinez – they had agreed to make it look like the number 69 because they could and they had kind of a dumb dude-bro friendship back then, before Jack had been enlisted into the Program. He had no idea what Martinez was doing nowadays, or if he was even alive. He ought to try to find out, at least.   
He was looking through his photos when the screen changed, asking him to answer a new call from Vincent.

“You should take that,” his mom said before he could decide.

“I should,” Jack agreed, but he sent the call to voice mail and kept scrolling.

Helen stood up to pour herself a new cup of coffee, patting Jack’s shoulder on her way. The dogs got up just as she said there were two cars coming, and they started barking. Henry got up to look at the window while Evie ran upstairs because she didn’t want people to see her in her pajamas – or, more likely, she didn’t want to see people.

“I think it’s for you, son,” his dad said.

Vince didn’t have a car, nor two. Jack put down his phone and took a look by the window, heart beating like crazy. Two black, armored vehicles were parking in front of the house, and half a dozen soldiers in complete gear, weapons and all, got out to take a look around. What the heck, Jack thought, a lump forming in his throat. What was that? Was he in trouble?

 

One soldier, a Sergeant, gave the all clear and opened the door to the second vehicle. Jack recognized the man in uniform standing up immediately: Gabriel Reyes, his roommate during the Program, his teammate, partner in crime, his _friend_ , and, let’s face it, probably the winner of the sick game they had been thrown into for six months. Jack felt a weird mix of anxiety and excitement take over him. Before he could process it, he was already at the door, running in socks in the gravel of the courtyard. The soldiers barely had time to point their guns at him, he was already into their ranks and Gabriel, _Gabe_ , was smiling and opening his arms wide. Jack didn’t manage to quite stop before the impact but it wasn’t important. Gabe embraced him without even moving and laughed.

“Good to see you too, Indie,” he said as he gestured to his men to stand down.

“Holy shit,” Jack mumbled repeatedly, his voice higher than usual because of the emotion. “Holy shit, Gabe, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I tried your home address but you weren’t there, and your boyfriend told me you might be at your parents’ so logically...”

“Why are you in Indiana?” Jack asked again, detaching himself from Gabe to shake him by the shoulders. “Holy shit!”

“It’s not for leisure, that’s for sure,” Gabe replied with a smirk. “The fuck I’d be doing in Nowhere, Indiana? Watch the corn grow? Fuck no.”

“Asshole,” Jack laughed. “What with the beard?”

“I looked too evil with just the goatee,” Gabe replied, stroking his chin. “Like it?”

“Yeah!” Jack said sincerely and messed with Gabe’s well cared for hair. “Makes you look all serious and important.”

Gabe smiled, that half-amused, half-bitter smile Jack had seen so many times on his face, and put some order in his hair before retrieving an envelop from his pocket.

“Your orders,” he said, presenting the letter to Jack.

“Took you long enough,” Jack replied with a confidence he didn’t feel, taking the envelop.

“Sorry I was busy,” Gabe chuckled. “You’d forget it watching your cows all day here but there’s a war going on, Sunshine.”

“Shit, I ain’t seen no cow since Uganda,” Jack laughed.

His fingers were shaking a little as he opened the envelop. There was a single sheet of paper in it, not with the U.S. army logo on but with the United Nations’ instead. The letter war short, two paragraphs. It was a requisition order from Special Task Force Commander Gabriel Reyes, but something was funny about it. Jack’s name had been added over white tape in the almost scary regular handwriting of his friend. Jack looked at Gabe, curious, but mostly anxious.

“You weren’t their first choice,” Gabe said.

But I’m yours, Jack thought, heart beating faster.

“’s’ okay,” Jack replied, putting the letter back into the envelop with shaky hands, “I wouldn’t be mine either.” Gabe frowned. “What?”

“It’s not the answer I was expecting,” he admitted.

“I didn’t make it, Gabe,” Jack said, taking a step back, a heavy weight on his stomach. “I didn’t finish the Program.”

“I know, and?”

“Maybe I’m not the right guy for whatever this is.”

“Says who?” Gabe asked.

“Says whoever decided I wasn’t their first choice.”

“Fuck them,” Gabe shrugged. “I’m in charge, and I say I want you as my medic. Of course you can refuse – let’s face it, the chances to get out of this alive are pretty slim.”

“But?”

“But I’m afraid you have to put some shoes on before we go,” Gabe pointed out.

Jake looked at his socks and chuckled, embarrassed.

“Alright, let me grab them,” Jack said, turning to the house. His parents were both on the porch, the dogs sitting at their feet but obviously wanting to go to Jack and the men around. It hit him. “I...” Jack started but Gabe interrupted him.

“You’d be an idiot if you didn’t think about it,” he said, “but I can’t give you more than an hour. Sorry,” he added as an after-thought.

“I understand,” Jack said. “So, huh, come on in, have a cup of coffee.”

“Sounds good.”

Gabe quickly took a thick manila envelop from the back of the car and followed Jack to the house. To Jack’s surprise, nobody came along.

“They’re not here for me,” Gabe answered Jack’s silent question.

“Oh so you’re not that important after all,” Jack joked.

“Everybody’s expendable.”

The way Gabe had spoken made Jack lose his smile.

 

Gabe was a bit peculiar, to say the least. He was focused, for one thing, and it was difficult to get him to let loose. Jack had spent weeks, months even, to figure out the smallest details about Gabe’s personal life. Third week: Gabe was married. Two days later: he had a daughter. Fifth week: his mom was a cop. Sixth week: he was a fan of the Lakers, which meant he probably came from Los Angeles. Eighth week: he had gone to college before joining the army, but no clue as to what had been his major. Eleventh week: he had been a theater kid in high school – that news blew Jack’s mind. Fourteenth week: Gabe had worked at some point for or with the CIA in covert operations in South America. Seventeenth week: his favorite author was Edgar Allan Poe. Twenty-second week: Gabe finally admitted he had been purposefully messing with Jack from the beginning, playing Mister Impenetrable because it was his conception of fun. Jack had laughed and, two weeks later, he had been kicked out of the program.

Maybe Gabe knew why.

 

“Ma’am,” Gabe saluted as he shook Helen’s hand. “Sir. Sorry to bother you so early on a Sunday.”

“I guess it can’t be helped,” Henry replied, looking at Jack. “Come on in, huh…?”

“Gabriel Reyes,” Gabe answered, putting aside his titles and rank, shaking his hand.

“Ah, Gabe, isn’t it? I’ve heard of you.”

“Good things I hope.”

“Meh,” Helen shrugged and that made Gabe laugh while Jack wanted to go hide somewhere.

As usual, it took only a second to Gabe to get the lay of the land. Jack saw him checking the exits and mentally calculate how long it would take him to get there. He also saw Gabe pause a fraction of a second more than necessary on the frames on the walls leading to the kitchen. There were pictures of Jack when he was a kid, smiling despite his missing teeth, with his football gear and with the trophy from the state’s track championship, at eighteen in uniform, with his former team during a rotation in Uganda, with Vince lounging in the sun during a family gathering in the summer. Jack had never seen a picture of Gabe before the Program and he felt cheated, somehow.

Henry offered Gabe a cup of coffee as he sat down and handed the thick envelop to Jack. Jack opened it. It was a standard contract with tons of subsections and fine lines.

“Read it,” Gabe ordered and Jack obeyed with a grimace.

“So, Gabriel,” Helen started, “did you just come to steal my son away or...?”

“It’s classified, ma’am,” Gabe replied with a sorry smile.

“Oh, okay. Huh, so, hm, how’s Indiana so far?”

“Didn’t see much of it, we landed maybe two hours ago. Nice house though,” he added, turning to Jack.

“Thanks,” Jack said automatically, lost in lawyer lingo.

“Cute boyfriend.”

“Jealous?” Jack fired back with a wink by habit. Gabe laughed. God it felt so good to talk to him again, falling back into their jokes and banters, their rhythm.

Jack’s parents looked at their son silly. Gabe took a phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen to show it to Jack. It was the first time he saw a picture of Gabe’s wife, a gorgeous Latina woman with a messy bun and full lips, bright green eyes, kissing the cheek of a little girl with a mess of curly, darker hair and a brilliant smile, laughing as the kiss tickled her.

“Damn,” Jack said.

“Yep,” Gabe smirked. “Cara and Lupita.”

“Is it weird I’m kinda jealous now?” Jack joked.

“Appreciate what you have,” Gabe replied wisely, showing the picture to Jack’s parents, “and read the damn contract.”

“Yessir.”

“Never been to Indiana before,” Gabe continued. “What is it like?” he asked and Jack knew he was just making people talk because he didn’t want to. His parents complied regardless and asked a few questions too about California. They all complained about the droughts and water restrictions and wild fires and dust storms in summer, and snow in winter, although Los Angeles had a lot less of that than Bloomington, but people were not prepared so south on the West Coast so it always took a dramatic turn. Gabriel still remembered the winter of 31 where it had snowed only two inches, something the city had not seen in a century. Everything had been stopped and he had had to stay home with his grand-mother. Henry laughed at that. Two inches of snow was nothing for Indiana, and the rest of the conversation consisted mostly in gently mocking those damn Californians and the Mid-Westerners.

 

It was abundantly clear in the contract that nobody would be responsible for Jack’s injuries or death if anything of that sort happened. Again, very standard. The pay was good though, and the bonuses were quite attractive. Jack wasn’t going to sign for the money, but it would be a nice plus. He looked around for a pen, found one on the counter next to the grocery list, and started to fill in the contract with his name, date of birth and the all of that. He was about to sign when Gabe stopped him, a hand on his.

“Don’t you have to talk about it with someone before you sign?” Gabe asked.

“Did you ask your wife for permission?” Jack replied, a little colder than he had meant to.

Gabe looked at him with a slight frown. He released Jack’s hand and crossed his arms.

“I’ll be responsible for your life, Jack,” he said, “and I’ll do whatever it takes to get you home alive, but I’m not responsible for the fuck ups in your personal life. I have mines, that’s enough.”

He hadn’t talked to his wife about it, Jack realized, and he regretted it, but he also knew he had to do it. Jack felt the same thing. He had to go back, he had to fight, he had to do something. And Vincent...

Jack signed the contract.

 

Jack didn’t want to rush his goodbyes with his family, but he also wanted to leave as soon as possible. Gabe gave them some privacy so they could hug and kiss and be together a few more minutes. Jack petted the dogs too before walking to the car that would take him to the airport. Gabe was sitting in the back, scrolling through a datapad, when Jack sat down. There was a big metallic box between them.

“What’s that?” Jack asked as the car started to move.

“The reason I’m late,” Gabe replied but he refused to say more on the subject. He didn’t talk either about what he had done in the last three weeks but Jack could understand that. They talked nonetheless about this and that during the drive, until the car stopped in front of Jack’s house. “Get your stuff,” Gabe said. “I’m not sharing my underwear with you again.”

“It happened once,” Jack defended himself.

“I have boundaries,” Gabe insisted, crossing his arms. “Now, go.”

Jack looked at him for a second. “Not sure I like you as my boss.”

“Oh my fucking God, go!”

 

Jack slid out of the car to stand in front of his house. He had worked on it with some friends during leave, nothing major, just repainting rooms, tending to the garden, do some electrical work here and there, install a new wooden floor, small stuff. It had been nice, a way to pass the time during his four months at home, before the war. On the three years he had officially lived here with Vincent, he had spent two of them on the front, with a few weeks of leave here and there. Was it really his home then? Sure, most of his stuff was there, and his boyfriend lived there, but Jack felt like a stranger every time he stepped into the house, not knowing where the olive oil was, where Vincent kept the hair trimmer, not remembering how the washing machine worked.

Would it be so bad to just leave? Just climb back into the car and drive away? It was terribly tempting, Jack realized, palms sweating.

The door of the car opened and Gabe appeared, not as annoyed as Jack would have thought. He walked calmly to Jack’s side and pushed him gently, a hand on his back.

“It’s okay,” Gabe whispered as they walked to the door. “I’m with you. To hell and back, soldier.”

 

The front door wasn’t locked – Vince had probably noticed Jack had not taken his keys earlier – and the house was silent. Vincent wasn’t in the living room, nor in the kitchen behind, but Jack could see a shadow on the deck outside. He turned left, nauseous, and climbed the stairs three steps at a time. Gabe followed but stayed outside of the bedroom as Jack quickly piled some clothes in his bag. He grabbed a few things from the bathroom, his phone charger, his passport, then two pairs of shoes downstairs. Vincent was still on the deck. Jack looked at Gabriel.

“I’ll be here if you need me,” he said.

Jack gulped and turned hesitantly to the garden door. Vincent was sitting on the right, on his chair next to the small coffee table. A cup of coffee was steaming next to him, as he just looked at the garden, smoking.

“I thought you’d quit,” Jack said, not really knowing how to start the conversation.

“It’s been a stressful couple of days,” Vincent replied, staring at the grass.

Jack gave a quick look inside the house and saw Gabe’s silhouette in front of the window, in the living room. Jack didn’t feel better. He wanted to run back inside, grab Gabe and his bag, then keep running to the front door.

“You’re leaving,” Vincent eventually said. Jack nodded. “For how long?”

“I – I don’t know,” Jack admitted.

“Where are you going?”

“I… don’t know either.”

“Will you be able to call me?”

“I don’t know,” Jack repeated again, a little stronger than before.

Vincent sighed and crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. “What do you know, then?”

“I can’t say anything,” Jack retorted, “it’s classified.” In fact, he didn’t know anything, just that Gabe wanted him as his medic for the team he was building under the protection of the United Nations. But, he knew Gabe, and Gabe knew what he was doing. Jack trusted him.

Vincent stayed silent for a moment, then turned to Jack.

“Are we breaking up?”

“Do you want to?” Jack asked in return, avoiding the question.

“No. You hurt me, Jack, but, fuck, I still love you. I still want to be with you, even if you’ve been a dick lately. I know it’s just a rough time for you, I _know_ it. I don’t like it, but I can deal with it and be there for you.” Jack didn’t reply, his throat tight with anxiety and guilt. “And you?” Vincent added. “Do you want to break up?”

Jack shook his head like a kid, incapable of talking. He looked again into the house, hoping, praying Gabe would come and tell him they had to go right now.

Vincent sighed again, this time a little frustrated. He pushed his hair back before standing up. He took a step in Jack’s direction. Jack stiffened. Vincent stopped.

“I’ll miss you,” Vince said gently, trying to catch Jack’s gaze. “Call me as soon as you can, okay? Doesn’t matter what time it is.”

“Okay,” Jack managed to reply, his voice hoarse.

Vincent tried to reach him for a hug but Jack turned to the door, feigning he hadn’t noticed, and walked straight through the kitchen and the living room, grabbing his bag on the way. He threw himself in the back of the car and waited for Gabe. He took several minutes to come back. That meant he had talked to Vincent. Great, Jack thought, eyes burning with tears.

The door opened and closed, the car started to move again. Jack kept staring through the window but he was grateful for the silence. He didn’t want to talk, not even to Gabe.

They arrived at the Indianapolis airport thirty minutes later and a private jet was waiting for them on the tarmac. Gabe took the metal box himself while a grunt took care of the luggage. Two armed men followed them to the jet but they didn’t climb the stairs with them. Instead, they saluted Gabe and went back to their vehicles. Inside, the staff of two pilots and a steward was clearly military. Jack felt out of place, still wearing his sweatpants and T-shirt, but nobody seemed to mind except him.

“The escort is waiting for us, Commander,” the steward said as Gabe sat down, fastening the belt on the metal box next to him. “They’ll accompany us until the international waters, then the UN will take us to Europe.”

“Good, good,” Gabe replied, more interested by his seat own belt than the news. “Will we make it on time?”

“Sadly no, Commander. The cyclone Lambert is on our planned path, we have to take a detour. We’ll be delayed by three hours, at least.”

“That’ll make for a memorable entrance,” Gabe smirked, looking at Jack. “Ready, soldier?”

Jack’s heart skipped a bit.

“To hell and back, Commander,” Jack replied.

Gabe smiled, half-amused, half-bitter.

“Then let’s do this.”

 

TBC


	2. Horus

_Rinse and Repeat_  
Chapter 2  
Horus

 

It was a rainy day in Geneva, a day where clouds were trapped between the Jura and the Salève and the other mountains around, dragged into this geological cul-de-sac by the lake – the Leman lake, not the lake of Geneva. Horus had read on the trip over that this lake was very deep, hence the impossibility to dig a subway system for the city, and very cold. It was also were the Swiss Navy trained despite the fact the country was landlocked. She liked it – a nation without sea but with a navy. It was as absurd as an endless war against an enemy that couldn’t die.

The large windows of this corner meeting room gave on the park surrounding the United Nations’ headquarters. There were too many trees to see the lake from the third floor, but Horus would bet the view was pretty great from the penthouse at the top. She had seen little of the city so far. They had arrived the previous day on a military airplane way too big for their small delegation, landed at a military base somewhere near the capital and drove to Geneva in about two hours. They had been consigned to their own suite within the headquarters and Ana hadn’t been allowed to wander around, not even in the park. She hadn’t been allowed to call her daughter either, but that was fine. She called Fareeha on Fridays after school, so that the little girl could tell her everything she had done during the week and her plans for the weekend. Horus would just listen and say some variations of “oh” and “ah” and “I’m so happy for you my love”. Even if Fareeha knew her mother was in the military, Horus couldn’t tell her what was going on on the front. Not that she cared much about what a four-year-old could understand and repeat of classified information, but what could she say to her baby girl, really? “Mommy put thirteen Omnics to sleep yesterday, and still couldn’t save Rachid’s life, but you got to play with Sophia all of Wednesday afternoon? This is great, I’m so happy for you! Love you to the moon and back!”

That was ridiculous.

Then again, she had not planned for a war against machines to start after she had had her little girl, nor had she had much choice in her recall. They had summoned Horus, thus Horus had had to leave everything behind, included her baby. Horus was just grateful Sam, Fareeha’s father, was far, far away from the worst of the crisis. Canada was safer than most places. It also was far away from Egypt, which was a big plus.

“Are we sure this meeting is for today or what?” a small man with a short braided blond beard grumbled, interrupting the silence.

Horus smiled for herself. She didn’t remember the name of that man because he was a civilian, but she suddenly liked him and his bushy eyebrows. He was small and bulky, a dwarf or whatever the appropriate term was in English, with piercing blue eyes and an accent from some country in the north of Europe – Finland, Norway or the third one she could never remember, something like that. He was accompanied by several officials from his country and two representatives of the United European Military Forces. Important enough, Horus supposed, but still a civilian. There weren’t many in the room.

Sitting in front of the dwarf was a giant in the greenish gray uniform of the German military forces, with plenty of little pieces of colored metal on his chest. Also blond, also blue eyed, but enough ghosts in the one remaining for Horus to understand the man had been on the front line too. Considering his size, he was probably one of those crazy Crusaders, giants clad in armor with a jet reactor attached to the back, a two meters tall hammer and one of those new photon shields that were charged to stop the waves of Omnics invading Germany. Horus had heard stories and read more reliable information about the Crusaders. Those guys were not expected to survive more than three battles in average. Having one so decorated at the table was a statistical anomaly.

The other anomaly was a Chinese man surrounded by a bunch of his superiors, all so decorated that they looked like Christmas trees. Horus couldn’t give him an age and wouldn’t risk it – she was just not used to Asian people enough for that. He looked friendly enough, she supposed, but something was off with this guy. She couldn’t really put words on it though, it was more of a feeling than anything else, like seeing an excellent copy of a famous painting. It would pass the test for most of the population, but experts could still find that little thing off. Horus had an eye for little things off, and her internal alarm was screaming.

The biggest delegation was the Americans’. Ten men, two women, some in various uniforms, some in civilian clothes but Horus didn’t believe they were civilians – CIA, NSA, some other acronyms, it didn’t really matter. Their pick was a man in his thirties, Caucasian, dark hair, some minor medals on his chest. Horus had smiled at her future colleague each time their gaze had met, and he had smiled back at her. For now, he was as amused as her by the little man’s attitude.

“Commander Reyes should be here any minute,” a woman with a thick Canadian accent replied. Alexandra Buissot, Horus reminded herself, the delegate the United Nation had thrown at them. A civilian, but she stood her ground despite all those testosterone-filled military uniforms around the table. Tall, blond with dark roots, pretty, very feminine, she had been mistaken for a secretary the previous day, and she had not been pleased. Ana liked her.

“He was supposed to be here four hours ago,” the little man insisted.

“Plans change,” the pick of the US shrugged lightly, “especially with Reyes.”

Horus arched an eyebrow.

“You know him?” the little man asked.

“We recently went through the same program, actually.”

“That’s enough, Lieutenant,” another American with more metal speckles on the chest warned.

The Lieutenant gave a sorry smile and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.

So the Lieutenant knew the Commander. There were numerous advantages to form a team with people who already knew each other, but it might also create a divide between all the members, especially with an international team. Germany, China, Egypt, the USA times two, that made for a strange team. Horus was half-surprised Russia had not sent one of their own in this international effort, but it was a rational decision. Even taking away one of their soldiers could be a problem for them at the moment. They had lost a big chunk of their defrosted land in the last few months, and there were talks of using the nuclear weapons they still had in stock to stop the Omnics. It didn’t take a lot of brain cells to figure out it would be a bad idea. Some Omnics would be obliterated for sure, but more would be built, with stronger plating and better radiation shields because each new attack made those damn things more resilient, while everything alive around would just die and the soil be contaminated for years. It wasn’t worth it, but desperate times made for stupid decisions.

The little man stayed silent for exactly three minutes before he turned to Buissot.

“Is this man really so important that we have to wait around with our thumbs up our butts?”

“If by ‘important’ you mean ‘the only tactician who got significant results against the Omnics so far’, I believe so,” Buissot replied with a patient smile.

“Oh, he’s responsible for Detroit then?” the little man asked, turning this time to the Americans.

“This is classified information,” the same man who had shut the Lieutenant down said.

The little man snorted. “Detroit was a fucking massacre, and we’re supposed to follow the orders of the man responsible for it?”

“You can leave if you want.”

“No,” the little man laughed, “no I can not.”

That sounded ominous to all the people in the room not knowing who that man was and why he was here, but nobody dared to speak. Until Horus couldn’t resist anymore.

“I’ll bite,” she said, slapping the table. “Why can’t you leave? You’re a civilian.”

The little man smiled, happy with his little effect, and sat back in his chair.

“I make weapons,” he replied.

“So you’re a consultant?” Horus insisted.

“Of sort,” he said, brushing his beard.

Horus smiled back, pissed off by how content the little man was, but a voice from the grave interrupted her with a strong German accent.

“You are Torbjörn Lindholm,” the Crusader said, looking at the man straight in the eyes. “You made the Omnics into weapons.”

The Lieutenant was as surprised as the Chinese anomaly, and as Horus to be quite frank. After a second, her brain started working again and it made sense. Who better than the guy responsible for the war to be part of their little team? At least he’d know how to counter the Omnics’ weapons. But why now? That information could have been really useful two years ago when the war had started. Had he been on the run? That would explain why he was so heavily escorted and why he didn’t have a choice in his involvement in this particular meeting.

Lindholm gave another wry smile and kept on brushing his beard, not intimidated at all by the Crusader who kept on staring at him.

People in the room were suddenly interested in something that was happening in the corridor behind her. Horus turned slightly to see two men in military uniform walking along the glass wall to the door, with a civilian young man with a clipboard trying to keep up.

The man in the front had the same skin color as her but was not from the Middle East – Hispanic, most likely. He was tall, had a beard, aviator sunglasses and a beret on. He was wearing his combat uniform, not his service one, which was odd for a meeting of that sort considering all the nice suits and shiny medals in the room. He was carrying coffee in one hand and a pile of paper files under his other arm.

The second American took a few steps forward to arrive before his colleague at the door and opened it for him. He was also tall but blond with fair skin, the kind of pretty face you’d see in a B movie in his country. Same combat uniform, but less ranks showing.

“At ease,” the Hispanic man said before anyone could even stand up or say anything. He dropped the files at the end of the table as a General of sorts objected.

“Are you really starting now with the attitude, Reyes?”

“Yessir,” Reyes replied without a moment of hesitation before throwing himself on his chair. “With your permission, Sir.” The General frowned. Horus fought her smile hard. “Sorry for the delay,” he continued, pointing at the blond guy standing at parade rest behind him, “had to pick up my medic.”

“I’m supposed to be your medic,” the Lieutenant said, raising his hand like a kid.

“Hey, Thompson!” Reyes beamed with a radiant smile that he dropped immediately. “You’re fired.”

“Thanks God,” Thompson sighed. When the General stared at him, he added: “This whole thing is suicide, so I’m fine with being fired.”

“You serve your country, Lieutenant,” the General replied. “If we don’t send you with Reyes, you’ll be on the front anyway.” He turned to the Commander. “You cannot change everything at the last minute, Reyes. We’ve thought this through and we have selected your team already, based on your criteria I might add.”

“And I’m fine with your picks,” Reyes shrugged. “That’s going to be fun to have a civilian in the middle but all I can see in this team is competent men and women. Good job on that. I’m still firing Thompson and I’ve hired Morrison instead. That’s not negotiable.”

“This is _not_ a negotiation, Reyes.”

“It is if you suddenly have to find someone else to replace me.”

Tension was palpable within the Americans, but Horus was more interested than anything. That guy had taken control of the room the moment he had walked in, both by his presence and by his words, annoying just the right people and making allies of his team members. It wasn’t quite enough for Horus to follow him to Hell yet but she’d consider his arguments to do so.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Alexandra Buissot intervened from the other side of the table, checking something on her phone, “I’m fine with Commander Reyes’ decision.”

“The Lieutenant has far more experience than – than this guy,” the General raised his voice, pointing at the blond guy.

“Sergeant Jack Morrison,” Reyes informed with a tone that sounded like revenge. “Or maybe you know him by his number: seventy-six.”

The General was now clearly angry, all red in the neck, his jugular visibly throbbing. Horus didn’t know why this information was important but it was enough to make all the Americans uncomfortable. They stayed angrily silent while Reyes took a sip of his coffee and Seventy-six straightened his back, avoiding eye contact with everybody. When Reyes was done, he shoved the bioplastic cup into the hands of the clipboard boy and told him to fill it again. Horus loved how casual he was.

“Anyway,” Buissot added, “Undersecretary Petras gave me full authority over this committee, so I’m the one Commander Reyes has to answer to. If he believes Sergeant Morrison is a better pick than Lieutenant Thompson, fine by me. Only the results count.” She raised her eyes to Reyes. “Are you sure of your decision, Commander?”

“I am, ma’am,” Reyes replied with conviction.

“Then it’s settled,” Buissot continued, picking up her datapad from the table and standing up. “I have another meeting to attend to. Send me your proposal and budget as soon as possible. We’ll be in touch.”

“Yes ma’am.”

A few people left the room, following Buissot. The Americans followed suit quickly, the General trying to kill Reyes with his glares. If Reyes noticed, it didn’t show. His sunglasses were hiding his eyes.

“So,” he said once the room was half empty, “we have a lot of work to do but I’m so not up for it right now.” Morrison did a poor job of hiding his smirk while Reyes looked at his watch – on the right wrist. Left handed. Interesting. He removed his glasses to rub his eyes, and dark circles were clearly visible. Sleep deprived. Just a night, Horus would say. “We’ll meet again at six hundred, team members only. Dismissed.”

And he stood up and walked away before anyone could say anything. Morrison followed after a brief salute. Clipboard boy ran after them in the corridor with the new coffee cup in hand. Lindholm snorted before bursting into laughter. He was still wheezing when Horus left the meeting room with her delegation.

 

***

 

“We have a secondary mission for you, Horus.”

That didn’t surprise her at all.

Once back in their suite, the Colonel had had a small meeting of his own in his office, leaving Horus alone in her room for twenty, twenty-five minutes. They had then summoned her in the living room and offered her a nice cup of tea that warmed her by this cold, rainy afternoon. Well, it wasn’t quite cold, but she wasn’t really used to the rain anymore, she only remembered it happening when she was a kid, and in her memories rain was associated with the cold. The cup of tea was welcome anyway. It was formal enough to warn her of something coming up, but also a nice touch. The Colonel always had nice touches. He was one of the good guys, a man who didn’t see his soldiers as just cannon fodder. He also had been the one pushing her name up the list. Horus didn’t feel particularly grateful for that, but that counted for progress in this day and age, and she was all for progress.

Horus looked at the pretty porcelain cup in her hand, white with a gold trim and flowers at the bottom, leaving room for the Colonel to talk. She couldn’t say no to his orders anyway, so why even bother?

The Colonel turned, leaving the rain and the clouds behind the windows to focus a bit, maybe.

“The Americans have a military program,” he said, hands in his back. “It’s called the ‘Soldier Enhancement Program’, or SEP. Thompson and Reyes were part of it, that much we know, but the rest is only speculation.”

“And you want me to get you some details,” Horus added casually. Espionage. It sure would be fun to gain her new commander’s trust and to betray it for her country the next day.

“We do,” the Colonel confirmed.

Horus thought about the meeting for a second.

“Thompson is out, but Morrison seems to have been part of it too,” she said. “Although there’s probably a catch here since that General didn’t know about him.”

“There’s always a catch,” the Colonel said grimly. He gave her permission to open a file next to her cup of tea. “Everything we could find in such short notice on Reyes.”

Horus gave a quick look at the ten or so pages retracing her new Commander’s life: born October 31st, 2018, no known father, mother a police officer in Los Angeles, graduated high school at sixteen, college for four years, recruited by the military as an analyst but trained nonetheless for the Special Forces, sent on disputable missions all around the world, married at the age of twenty-six, a kid born just before that (same age as Fareeha, Ana noticed), made it to Captain during the war but disappeared seven months ago, probably recruited for that SEP thing. There also was something in there about Detroit, a complete analysis of the battle. Horus took her time to read the remaining five pages completed with maps and diagrams. Two hundred men dead, or sent to their death rather, as decoy for the real objective: a Relay. Reyes had managed to capture alive the first Relay, two years into the war. Well, alive was kind of an awkward word to describe a machine, but it was still functioning. Considering Relays always blew themselves up to not give the enemy any valuable information, it was a big win indeed. Two hundred lives plus wasn’t that big of a price for it though, Horus thought.

From what she understood of the profile, Reyes wouldn’t be easy to befriend. He was smart, and his job had been to evaluate the situation and the people around him and see what he could do with that. He’d know Horus was up to something as soon as he’d lay his eyes on her. Maybe she could use the married angle, or the kid.

“How about Morrison?” Ana asked abruptly.

“We’ll have information on him in the next few days,” the Colonel said. “We had a file ready for Thompson, but Reyes cut the grass under our feet on this one.”

“I’ll dig into him,” Horus decided. “He looks friendlier than Reyes.”

“Americans are like that. They ‘look friendly’ until they decide you’re not useful anymore. Look at how they turned their back on terrorism in the Middle East last decade, leaving us to deal with the mess they made.”

“Fair enough,” Horus admitted. She knew the subject quite well. Before putting Omnics to sleep, she had done that to religious zealots who had been terrorizing the region for the last thirty years. She had worked with a few Americans at the beginning of her career, but they had called their boys home, and now Egypt and Israel were the shield of Middle East, the gatekeepers of Africa. The Omnic Crisis hadn’t really been a problem in the region for a long time because of this war on terrorism, actually. Few omniums. Nobody wanted to invest somewhere where a bunch of kids involved in a cult could blow everything up. Thanks God Cairo’s omnium hadn’t been completed when the Crisis had started, and so far the situation was contained there. On the other hand, Dubai was a ghost city now. Strangely, nobody had wanted to save a place where there was barely any oil left, especially the friendly Americans.

Morrison was the safe choice. Reyes was the challenge. Horus was going to have fun.

 

***

 

Horus arrived ten minutes early at the meeting room and was surprised to find the Crusader and the Chinese anomaly already there, sitting in silence in the chairs they had previously occupied. So much to make a good impression. Horus sat on the Crusader’s side, but not far either from the other guy.

“Pardon me, I didn’t catch you guys’ names earlier,” she said, going for casual with her new teammates.

“Liao,” the Chinese man replied.

Horus arched an eyebrow. “Liao,” she repeated. “Is that a family name?”

“I’m just Liao,” he shrugged with a sorry smile.

A code name then. Absolutely not suspicious. She turned to the Crusader.

“Lieutenant Reinhardt Wilhelm, Fifth Armored Division.”

His voice was mechanical. He had repeated that title a lot, Horus would bet.

“I’m Ana Amari,” she added. “I doubt my Captain position will be carried in this team, so just Ana is fine, but I do like being called ma’am.”

Liao snorted. “It’s rare for women to join the army in your country,” he noted. He looked a bit more relaxed now, also playing the game of faces. Secret services or some intelligence agency, Horus decided.

“It’s even rarer for a woman to rise to the rank of Captain,” she replied with a shrug, “and yet, here I am.”

“Congratulations,” Liao smiled.

“Thank you,” Horus nodded and she stopped at that. She was sure Liao could figure out how to find information on her, if he didn’t already have it. It wasn’t really important anyway. Each country had their dirty little secrets, and Egypt’s weren’t hard to dig up, especially when the army had suddenly had a lot of excellent marksmen in their ranks. Cybernetic enhancements made sense during a war against machines, even if the ethic of it was doubtful.

They sat in silence until Lindholm arrived in a nice suit a few minutes later, not waddling on his little legs as much as Horus had previously thought. He was tall for a dwarf, maybe a meter forty or fifty. Of course, he was ridiculously short compared to the Crusader – Wilhelm. Those guys had to be at least two meters twenty to fit in their armor. Crazy stuff.

Crazy times.

“So,” Lindholm said as he sat on Liao’s side, “what do you think of our Commander?”

“I like him,” Horus replied.

“He knows who to piss off and who he can count on to back him up,” Liao added. “Good leadership qualities.”

“What about Detroit?” Lindholm asked, not waiting for Wilhelm to answer.

“Tactical necessity,” Liao shrugged. “Bold of him, but he did get results.”

“You guys are cute and all,” Horus interrupted before Lindholm could speak, playing the innocent, “but some of us don’t know what happened in Detroit.” She wanted to hear his version of the story. Lindholm seemed like a guy who would put his nose everywhere and have a strong opinion about everything.

“You don’t know?” he asked, surprised.

“Would I ask if I knew?” Horus retorted.

Lindholm looked at her right in the eyes for a second before laughing. Apparently, he liked her verb. The little man regained his seriousness and said: “He managed to capture the first Relay ever.”

Horus let him have his moment. Relays were huge machines with tentacle-like arms and enough firepower to maul a tank. They were also pretty high up in the hierarchy of the Omnics. They supervised lower rank Omnics like Bastion and Terror units and coordinated the attacks with the help of information sent by the drones. Relays were the first chain of command capable of thinking, with supposedly enough calculation power to ridicule the best man-made super computers available. But their true force was their communication network. Relays were capable, God knew how, to share their information instantaneously, and share together all their individual knowledge. To put it clearly, what one Relay knew, every other Relay knew too. They knew every strategy ever attempted against any of them, anywhere on the globe, and they were smart enough to figure out what to do to counter it in less time than it took for two human neurons to communicate. Killing one was possible, although extremely difficult. It had happened in Russia, Horus knew about it. The targeted Relay had chosen to destroy itself instead of being captured, but all the information it had contained had been shared before that, which meant the same strategy would not work twice on any other Relay.

“How did he do it?” Horus asked, indulging in the little man’s need for attention.

“No idea,” Lindholm shrugged, “but I know the body count for this operation. Two hundred and fifty-six soldiers died to get that one Relay alive. Of course, whatever tactic Reyes used for that feat can no longer be part of his bag of tricks, so we can only assume the next capture will require more… resources.”

“But we’re a team of six,” Liao remarked.

Lindholm gave him his wry smile in return. Horus smirked too.

Morrison suddenly appeared in the corridor, offering a much needed distraction. He was freshly showered and in civilian clothes, a nice baby blue shirt with a pattern on it and well worn Jeans and snickers. He looked twenty despite his square jaw and his large shoulders.

“Huh, hi,” he said as he opened the door. His voice was deep and rocky, as if he had been chain-smoking since birth. “There’s been a change of plans.”

“Oh again!” Lindholm mocked. “How long do we have to wait for the Commander this time?”

“Actually, he’s waiting downstairs. If you’ll follow me?”

“Do we have to?”

Morrison didn’t really know how to answer to Lindholm fucking with him. Horus forced herself to laugh as she stood up and the others followed suit. A short elevator ride and a few corridors later, they arrived in the main entry hall and all its big windows and sofas in between security check and important people running around. It took a second for Horus to find Reyes, slouching on a sofa and looking at his cellphone. He wasn’t wearing his beret anymore. He was wearing black Jeans with black leather boots and a black hoodie over a bright yellow T-shirt. He also had rectangular glasses on, with a big plastic frame. When they approached, he didn’t lift his ass from the sofa and frowned instead.

“Why are you guys wearing your uniforms?” he asked, thumbs still hovering over his cellphone.

“Because we were supposed to have a formal meeting with our new Commander,” Horus replied, determined to not be impressed by this man. “Have you seen him around?”

A sharp smile slowly appeared on Reyes’ lips. He checked something on his phone quickly.

“Ah shit, no time to change,” he explained as he stood up, locking his phone and sliding it in his back pocket, “we’re gonna be late. Alright then. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Lindholm asked as they started walking to the building’s exit.

“Somewhere nice,” Reyes answered, throwing his hood over his head to protect himself from the light rain still falling. “Well, if Jack’s French isn’t too rusted.”

“Next time, you do the work and I take the nap,” Morrison replied without missing a bit.

“You napped on the plane,” Reyes grumbled, turning to face the other American but still walking towards the street across the long esplanade in front of the main building.

“And it’s my fault you couldn’t?” Morrison asked. “We had medication on board, you could have slept like a baby all the way to Switzerland.”

“And not be awake in case of an emergency? You crazy, Nebraska?”

“Gabe,” Morrison warned, exasperated, “we’ve been over this a hundred times already.”

“Metal cans are not meant to fly!”

“They’re not?” Lindholm asked, dubious.

“No, they’re not,” Reyes confirmed vigorously. “They’re just death traps in the sky as far as I’m concerned.”

“I’m no aeronautic engineer, but I’m pretty sure I can explain to you how an airplane actually flies, Commander.”

“Don’t bother,” Morrison interrupted. “I tried,” he said, looking at “Gabe” heavily. “Gabe” gave him a mean look in response. Morrison rolled his eyes but his attention was suddenly caught by something else in the distance. “Ah, the tramway.”

Reyes looked over his shoulder. “Shit! Next one’s in ten minutes! Run!”

He turned around and ran. It took a second for Morrison to follow, easily catching up. Horus shrugged and started to run too. She heard Liao laugh behind her and Lindholm rant about how tiny his legs were. The next second, he was just yelling, and the noise grew closer really fast. Wilhelm carrying Lindholm went past Horus in a flash and they arrived second at the tram station after Morrison. She couldn’t quite slow down before she arrived so she finished against Reyes’ chest, the dogtags under his shirt leaving an imprint on her cheek. It was like hitting a brick wall. Liao arrived last, jumping into the wagon just before the doors closed. People looked at them for a second before going back to their cellphones.

There wasn’t really enough room for Horus to move, so she stayed sandwiched between Reyes and Liao and tried to look at the city through the windows. She didn’t catch much between the people and the raindrops obscuring the view. At the central train station, a lot of passenger left. Lindholm sat but none of the others followed his example. The tramway continued its route, following the hill down to the lake, crossed it, and they had to jump into another line shortly after. There, Reyes sat, giving some attention back to his phone, Morrison next to him. Horus stayed stuck to the window. The architecture was very different from what she was accustomed to. The buildings had that “old continent” look, six or seven floors, with apparent wood structures supporting the roof, white facades and high windows to catch the sun in winter. As the tramway left the center of town, large properties appeared, with walls surrounding little mansions, or gardens around tall glass buildings. There were trees everywhere, already in their fall apparel. Night was falling, and the headlights of the cars were blinding in the obscurity. It reminded Ana of Quebec and her little girl.

It took them about twenty minutes to reach their destination and they were already in another town, still part of the larger Geneva area, but clearly not the city itself. The buildings were more common, less refined, more lived in. An area for the common people, Horus thought as she followed Reyes on the pavement. The rain was barely noticeable, yet Reyes’ glasses were covered in drops when they stopped at a crossroad, waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green.

“Hope you guys are hungry,” the Commander said.

“We’re going to a restaurant?” Lindholm grumbled.

“Yep.”

“That would have been nice to be told before we left,” he continued. “I don’t have my wallet or anything.”

“Wouldn’t‘ve been a surprise,” Reyes replied, not at all bothered by the tone of the little man. The light turned green and he started walking again. “Besides, it’s on me, don’t worry.”

“You’re gonna put the tab in the budget, aren’t you?” Morrison asked, somewhat amused.

“Who knows,” Reyes replied, and Morrison laughed at that.

The two were obviously friends, Horus decided, but so far Reyes didn’t seem as hard-ass as his profile had insinuated. Maybe it was just another face game, Horus thought, like hers or Liao’s.

Horus almost missed the entry of the restaurant. Behind a glass door adorned by painted fat cows and flowers was a large room overheated with a high ceiling where wooden beams supported huge bells, bouquets of dried wild flowers and instruments that appeared to be used in a farm. There was wood everywhere, from the floor to the roof. Horus felt like she was suddenly in a chalet in the middle of the Alps, even if she had just a vague notion of what a chalet was. It was too hot, the other patrons were too noisy and the smell was a bit overwhelming – people, alcohol, cooking, that sort of things. She gave a look to her teammates as she removed her jacket. Reyes seemed very satisfied with himself. Morrison was trying to speak with a waitress a few meters from the group. Lindholm was brushing his beard, looking curiously around with his little mouse eyes. Liao was trying to disappear in the background. Wilhelm was beaming.

He hadn’t spoken much so far, and Horus didn’t know what to make of that. Somehow, she didn’t have the feeling that he was a quiet giant. You couldn’t be put in a knight armor to be pushed by a jet reactor through the battlefield and be completely sane, she thought. Maybe it was a language thing, but Germans usually had a pretty good English.

The waitress eventually understood Morrison and took them to a table for six perpendicular to a large window giving on a little street. Reyes sat next to the window, in front of Morrison. Horus slid next to the blond American, and Lindholm took the last seat on their bench. Liao got stuck between Reyes and Wilhelm on the other side. The menus already on the table were in French but the waitress, wearing a floral dress with ribbons and a cute apron, swept those for English ones without being asked to, to Morrison’s obvious relief.

“Why is there a menu in a restaurant only serving fondue?” Lindholm complained.

“There’s several kind of fondues, apparently,” Liao replied, studying the list. “Oh, and there’s appetizers and cured meats!”

“I can read, thank you,” Lindholm grumbled.

“Should we just order a bit of everything?” Reyes asked.

“I’m game if you pay, not your boss,” Morrison replied.

Reyes frowned slightly and took his phone out of his pocket to check something on it. He grimaced. “The exchange rate is pretty bad.”

“So you’re really paying out of your pocket?” Lindholm asked with a smirk.

“I don’t want to be fired on my second day on the job for excessive expense reports so yes, I am,” Reyes said, pushing his phone aside.

“Miss!” Lindholm waved at the waitress. “One of everything!”

If Reyes was pissed, it didn’t show. He had a great poker face, Horus noticed, a mildly annoyed look that could be seen as unfriendly neutral. Morrison was the opposite. He had a friendly smile, big blue eyes and an inviting demeanor.

“So you guys know each other?” Horus asked, looking at the two Americans.

“Yeah!” Morrison replied.

“Yeah,” Reyes added, less enthusiastic.

“What’s that tone?” Morrison laughed.

“Sometimes,” Reyes answered, obviously choosing his words carefully, “I feel like I know too much.”

“Like what?” Morrison teased. Reyes gave a quick look at the others at the table. “It’s fine,” Morrison smiled, crossing his arms. “Do your worst, Cali.”

“A guy shouldn’t know how his friend likes to arrange his dick in his pants, for example,” Reyes said.

“But,” Morrison objected, suddenly red, “if I have my two arms broken and you have to dress me...”

“Fuck no,” Reyes interrupted. “I have boundaries, Indie, _boundaries_. Respect them, for fuck’s sake.”

“Anyway,” Morrison smiled back at Horus, “yes, we’re friends.”

“Or at least,” Reyes added, “we went through the same shit.”

“Thompson was with us too, actually,” Morrison continued.

“But he’s a dick,” Reyes commented.

“He looked friendly,” Horus remembered.

“Huge dick,” Reyes insisted, miming it with his hands. The waitress arrived when his hands were separated by a good meter, notebook in hand, eyes already dead. Reyes gave her an annoyed look, hands still wide apart. “ _Nous voudrions toutes les entrées une fois et toutes les fondues une fois, s’il-vous-plaît_ ,” he grumbled in an impeccable French with just a slight American accent on the r. “ _Et le vin que vous recommanderez, ainsi que de l’eau plate._ ”

“ _Voulez-vous aussi du thé chaud pour accompagner la fondue ?_ ”

“ _Quel genre avez-vous ?_ ”

“ _Bergamotte._ ”

“ _Parfait._ ”

“ _C’est noté_ ,” the waitress replied, suddenly happier because of the big order. “Thank you very much,” she added in English and left.

Morrison stared at Reyes.

“What?” Reyes sighed.

“You speak French,” Morrison replied accusingly.

“Yeah, so?”

“You made me find the restaurant, call, and make a reservation, even if you speak French and I only have vague memories of it from high school?”

“Yeah,” Reyes smirked. “That was fun.”

Morrison kept staring at his friend until the waitress came back with two large plateaus of cured meat with grapes and pickles, homemade bread and butter, and several bottles of white wine with different labels on it, plus tap water.

“Is that pork?” Horus asked, pointing at the cured meat.

“Ah, yeah”, Reyes said. “Sorry, didn’t think of...”

“I’m not religious,” Horus waved him off, “but old habits die hard.”

“They probably have turkey or something off menu. Jack can ask if you want,” Reyes added with a wink to his friend. Who replied with his middle finger as he was busy downing his first glass of wine.

“It’s fine,” Horus assured, amused despite herself. “I’ll wait.”

“Anyone lactose intolerant while we’re at it?” Reyes inquired jokingly.

“Cheese isn’t exactly part of my diet,” Liao commented.

“You’re gonna have a fun night, son,” Lindholm mocked.

Liao had a sorry smile. Reyes took a sip of his wine, his glass in the left hand.

“So, there are several reasons why I’d rather have an informal meeting in an overcrowded and noisy restaurant than back at HQ,” Reyes said, cutting to the chase. Everybody looked at him, suddenly serious. Reyes gave them a smirk. “First, control of information.” Horus didn’t feel particularly targeted but it was bold of him to start like that. “I’m not an idiot,” Reyes continued, “I know you’ve been asked to report something to someone. Go ahead, do it, I don’t care, but remember we’re a team. Maybe not for long, maybe for years, who knows? In any case, this can only work if we trust each others. So try not to give away big personal secrets that could endanger our team, thank you. How Jack handles his dick is fair game though.”

“Gabe!” Morrison protested, red like a tomato.

“Secondly,” Reyes continued, ignoring his friend, “I really needed to sleep because I had to pick up Jack in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana, and there was the hurricane on the way. That’s why I was late for the meeting.”

“Apart from being a dick,” Lindholm interrupted, “why did you fire Thompson? They said he had more experience.”

“I don’t trust him,” Reyes answered.

“Why?” Lindholm insisted.

Reyes chose his words carefully again. It was clear to Horus that he didn’t want to say too much. “We may have been into the same boat lately, but that doesn’t mean we were in it for the same reason or with the same goal. Thompson is a competent man, don’t get me wrong, I’d work with him in any other situation, but in this case, Jack is a better pick. You’ll see, he’ll grow on you really fast and soon enough he’ll talk to you about his dick and...”

“Come on,” Morrison grunted behind his glass of wine. “I’m sure I didn’t even tell you that, you probably just picked it up because you notice everything.”

“It’s a gift and a curse,” Reyes replied wisely.

“Doesn’t that mean he just looked at your crotch?” Lindholm asked.

Morrison went all red again and downed another glass.

“Yeah, looking at people’s genitals is a hobby of mine,” Reyes replied deadpan serious. “Anyway, third reason: I wanted to know you guys outside of your uniforms. Kinda failed on a literal level, admittedly, but the night is still young and some of us barely touched the wine, so I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”

“Did you not read our files?” Wilhelm asked, opening his mouth for the first time of the evening, and after his first glass of wine, Horus noticed. It probably was a language thing. His accent was pretty heavy.

“It’s just paper,” Reyes shrugged. “It’s not telling me your favorite color or how you put your…”

“Okay!” Morrison stopped him, “I get it already!”

“Well, usually right handed people put it on the right so I don’t need to ask anyway.”

“Oh my God, Gabe,” Morrison moaned, hiding his face out of shame for real this time, even his ears red.

“That’s statistics,” Reyes continued. “I can also tell sixty-eight percent of you would say blue is your favorite color, or that you probably like Fridays and sad music when you’re feeling blue. What statistics and psychology don’t tell me is what makes you fight for this war. Why did you enlist, Wilhelm?”

The Crusader deflated a little.

“I wanted to fly,” he said hesitantly, “to be a pilot, but I did not succeed the tests. I have bad eyes, even before I lost the one,” he added, pointing at the fresh scar on his face. “And I was too big,” he chuckled. “But they wanted me for the _Gebirgsjäger_ , the – the mountain infantry, yes? I liked it. It was outside all day, by all weathers. I went to Siberia to train too for extreme weather, and in Algeria for desert training, beautiful country, and in Nepal because our mountains in Germany are not tall enough for low oxygen, yes? I liked it, I liked the challenge, and I was good at it, so I stayed. And when the Omnics attacked, I fought, and one day they told me I could do more for my country, so I joined the elite, the Crusaders, and we started to win.”

Lindholm snorted. “You think Germany is winning?”

“They’re keeping their ground,” Reyes interrupted. “That’s more than some do.” He took a sip of his wine. “Amari?”

Now, Horus thought carefully, to go with the truth or just half of it? She played with her glass of water for a second. Being too open would be suspicious.

“I wanted to escape,” she said calmly.

“Escape what?” Lindholm asked.

“Escape little men too curious for their own good,” Horus replied with a wink. “And you, Commander?”

“The army was recruiting and I needed a job,” Reyes answered, shrugging. “It wasn’t a vocational thing like Oversharing Blondie over there – ”

“Gabe...”

“ – but I ended up liking my job. My contract was coming to an end, I had a kid and a wife to support, I was good at what I was doing and I was up for a promotion, so I signed up for another term. Three weeks later, war started.”

“That sucks,” Morrison commented, sorry for his friend.

Reyes shrugged again, picking a grape that he played with, rolling it on the table. “Ultimately, I do it for my kid. I grew up when white supremacists, terrorists to be quite frank, were on the rise, threatening every non-white communities. My uncle died, shot by a white psycho who thought Mexicans were stealing all the jobs – never mind my uncle was born in Cali like his father and grand-father before him. I’ve seen hate, I’ve seen riots for clean water or food or civil rights, I’ve seen war long before I joined the army. I don’t want my kid to grow up in a world like that. She’s still young, she won’t remember much of the war if we put an end to it soon. That’s why I fight.” He picked the grape up and threw it at Morrison, who caught it with thunder-like reflexes. “And you, Jackie, what brought you here?”

“I wanted to be a doctor,” Morrison said, “but I couldn’t go to college. Too expensive, and my grades weren’t good enough to try and have debts for the rest of my life, so I did the next best thing: I signed up. I got into the medic program, got to learn a lot of stuff, see the world, help people. When the war started, I didn’t even think about leaving, I just had to do my job.” He ate the grape and turned to Liao. “And you?”

“I’m good at what I do, that’s why I do it,” Liao said with a smile. “Why is Mister Lindholm with us? Isn’t he a civilian?”

“He is,” Reyes confirmed. “Wanna explain?”

“Sure,” Lindholm grumbled. “As you are all aware, I weaponized the Omnics, and I knew it all along. My guild had a big contract with Omnica Corporation, before their fall. They wanted to sell armed robots to the Americans, Russia and China, so we made them – it was a really big contract. But a few years into the project, they had all their legal troubles and they were forced to close shop. What happened then, I don’t know, but the Omniums started again, and they made Bastion and Terror units, and other models based on my designs, I think because of their self-learning algorithms. The war started and instead on finding a solution, people looked for a culprit. I am that man. You see, I also am very good at my job, and the Omnics chose my designs over anyone else’s, so my guild threw me under the bus. I have been awaiting for my trial and the certain prison sentence that will go with it for over a year, but I was offered an out: work to defeat the Omnics with a special task force. So here I am.”

“And a certain death mowed by Bastions is preferable to a few years of prison?” Horus asked, incredulous. “Aren’t prisons in Norway really nice?”

“I’m Swedish,” Lindholm corrected, “and our prisons are nicer than the Norwegians’, but yes, I chose to work on this project. I am an engineer, you see, I create and I fix things. I almost went crazy just sitting on my ass all day waiting for my trial, I do not want to do that for the rest of my life in a comfortable prison cell.”

“But it’s going to be really dangerous,” Horus insisted.

“Bah,” Lindholm shushed her. “At least I’ll die doing what I like to do.”

“And you’ll learn a few things,” Reyes promised as Horus looked at Lindholm as if he was blue and coming from Mars. “Jack is a good shot, he’ll teach you how to use a gun.”

“I’m the sniper,” Horus countered while Morrison gave a thumb up, “I should teach him how to use a gun.”

“Yeah but I’ll need you and Liao with me in the planning room all week,” Reyes said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I didn’t really want to talk about that now so let’s not. Besides,” he added, looking at the two waitresses coming in their direction, “the main course has arrived.”

The waitresses put three big ceramic casseroles full of melted cheese on some sort of camping stove on the table, with more bread and small steaming potato, several teapots with cups, cream and sugar, said something in French and left.

“Alright,” Reyes said, stabbing a potato with a long fork, “ _bon_ _appétit !_ ”

 

***

 

“Friends who know too much about each other – best friends?” Horus wrote later in her preliminary report. She looked at the line, white on blue, hands hovering over the keyboard. She sighed and leaned back in her chair, looking at her steaming cup of tea. She couldn’t put that in her report, could she? It had nothing to do with the secret military program Reyes and Morrison had been a part of – unless the US wanted to created Super Best Friends Forever. The power of Friendship! Surely it could save the world!

Horus rubbed her eyes. The clock in the corner of the screen turned to one hundred right then. It was now Tuesday, four more days to go until she could call Fareeha.

Horus hit the back key until the page was left blank and wrote instead: “Use the kid.” Reyes had opened up when he had talked about a better future for his kid. It was a daughter, Horus remembered, Lupita, four years old, born in August. Fareeha was two months older. It wasn’t hard to imagine them best of friends too.

Ana hit the back key until the page was left blank and she shut the computer down. She spin in her chair a few times. It slowly came to a halt, and she was back in front of the bulky laptop she used – military grade, the thing had literally survived a shooting once, you could still see the impact marks on the case. There were stickers on it: unicorns, hearts, flowers, birds, and glitters – so much glitters. Ana pushed the corner of a jumping unicorn down, hoping it would stick to the titanium case until Fareeha could put something on top of it. How long until she could see her daughter, and take her in her arms and kiss her?

Maybe she could bring her here, tell Sam it was safer in Switzerland, but that meant staying in Geneva for a while, a year or more. The long game. It would be difficult. She’d had to survive the missions, work with the others in that strange configuration, make a life here, convince Reyes to do the same, that meant befriending him before that, and it wouldn’t be easy if he already suspected his teammates to spy on him.

It was doable, Horus decided. She opened up her computer again and started writing down her plan. Ana hated every word of it.

 

TBC


	3. Gabriel

_Rinse and Repeat_  
Chapter 3  
Gabriel

 

Gabriel woke up at once, like years in the army had taught him to. He was suddenly aware of his surroundings, but didn’t recognize them. It wasn’t his room because he had never reached it the previous night. Jack had grabbed him in his drunken state and didn’t let go, Gabriel liked to think he had fought back but he had been too tired and, eventually, he had slept in Jack’s bed.

The truth was, once in the embrace of Jack’s warmth, Gabriel had just melted. It had been so long since he had had human contact that it had sufficed to make him want to stay there forever. That was kind of pathetic, Gabriel knew that, but he was only human; handshakes and rubber gloves and needles on his arm only got him so far. It had felt so good when Jack had jumped into his arms the other day – his first hug in weeks, months even. And last night was probably the best night Gabriel had had since his last rotation home. Being the little spoon was awesome. And Jack was still sleeping and weighted a tonne so Gabriel had to stay in bed a little longer. Oh well. I’d live.

Gabriel eventually reached for his phone on the bedside table. Lulu’s cheerful giggles welcomed him when he unlocked the screen. No new message though. The clock told him it was 5:31AM, so 8:31PM in Los Angeles. He had sent Cara a message twelve hours ago. No answer. She was pissed. Rightly so but Gabriel would have preferred a long rant than silence. He opened the messenger app. Yep, his last text was marked as read. He opened the conversation and read his message again.  
“Hey Cara,  
I love you.  
I’ve finally been allowed to get my phone back and I’ve been put in charge of something big, can’t tell you what. What I can tell you is that I’ll be stationed in Europe for a while, Switzerland to be precise. I arrived this morning to meet my team. A friend of mine joined us, Jack. I can’t wait for you guys to meet, he’s pretty fly for a white guy.  
Thanks for the pictures, I’m downloading them as I type. It’s taking a while because there’s so many of them, awesome! I’m sorry I missed Lulu’s birthday.  
I hope everything is going okay for you guys. I’ve heard the Bakersfield front is pretty stable but I’m worried. I worried every day and I didn’t have access to any fresh information so that was pretty shitty. If need be, don’t hesitate to call Colonel Freeman. He owes me and he’ll get you out of LA.  
I miss you girls more and more every day. I love you and I hope to see you soon.”

His chest hurt again just reading those words.

Gabriel checked the weather and changed a few parameters on his phone as a distraction. He set a second clock on his screen to keep track of the time in Los Angeles, then read the headlines of a few newspapers. He had been out of the loop for over six months and needed to catch up – he’d get more accurate news from military sources later. The Lackers were doing pretty good. It always baffled Gabriel to realize life went on, even during war. People kept doing their stuff. They got up, went to work, did something, went back home, slept, and maybe fifty miles from there soldiers were dying to keep the front line. Cara had refused to leave Los Angeles so far, despite Bakersfield being a hundred and eleven miles north-west. War was literally a two hours drive away, but Cara didn’t want to move, not even to San Francisco to be with her family – not that San Francisco was statistically safer than any other city in the US but at least it wasn’t as close to Bakersfield as LA. Cara’d probably refuse to move to Geneva too, even if Switzerland was a safe haven. They had no Omnium here, and the mountains would protect the country like they did during the two previous world war – plus it was nested in between many, many heavily weaponized countries, a lot of people had assets placed in the many vaults of the country and would literally go to war to protect them, and the country itself had impressive defenses. The UN had moved their headquarters to Geneva after the Battle of New York, so the security was pretty tight.  
It would help Gabriel to know his girls were safe, it would bring him some peace of mind to know they weren’t a two hours drive from the front line, but Cara didn’t want to move.

God this woman was stubborn.  
God he loved her.

Gabriel put his phone down after giving one last look at the top left corner of the screen and tried to think about something else. He had a lot to do today and in the following week. He wanted to strike as soon as possible, but he couldn’t really just jump on a plane and go kill some Omnics either. Lindholm had to learn how to use a gun and not die in the first five minutes of the mission, Amari had to study the terrain, Liao had to get reliable information on said terrain before that, and Gabriel had a mountain of documents to review, plus a budget to make. Also Jack would have to assess everybody’s health and prepare in consequences.

What to do with Wilhelm for a week though? Gabriel had no idea. He wasn’t even the guy Gabriel had wished for, that one had died on him a few days before the meeting during the battle of Eichenwalde. Just his luck. Balderich Von Adler had been a pretty good strategist, someone level-headed, with a lot of experience. He had created the Crusaders, at first to inspire people to fight back, but their gigantic armors and shields had proven efficient against the Bastion units. Heck, the Crusaders had _won_ battles. Von Adler had done something right, and Gabriel had wanted this man in his team badly.  
Instead of that, he had Reindhart Wilhelm, a man who had a long history of abandoning his teammates in search of glory, disobeying orders and talking back. Von Adler had died because of Wilhelm in Eichenwalde. Gabriel needed to have a talk with the Crusader, the sooner the better. And that would be fun because he wasn’t sure the guy understood English quite well. Wilhelm had been a bit lost the previous night, and the wine hadn’t made things easier. By the end of the evening, he was speaking more German than English, and loudly with that. He had even started to sing some opera at some point, and Gabriel had called it quit, just in time to realize with horror that Jack, although quieter, was drunk as well.

Walking through the buildings of the UN headquarters had been embarrassing, to say the least.

Okay, so he had to talk to Jack too. That, he could do easily. It would be uncomfortable considering the boner Gabriel could feel through his and Jack’s jeans but doable. It wouldn’t be his first morning greeted by Jack’s boner anyway – ah, the joy of having a roommate!

Gabriel tried to move a bit to avoid being directly in contact with Jack, but Jack moaned and just tightened his grip on him. Great, Gabriel thought as Jack’s hand grabbed his tit, just fucking great. He elbowed Jack.

“Five minutes,” Jack groaned.

A part of Gabriel wanted to push Jack back and maybe choke him to death with a pillow, but the other part was totally fine with five more minutes of bear hug – was Jack a bear? Gabriel felt like he should have known that, yet he didn’t and that bothered him for the first minute of the five allowed. At two minutes and forty-five seconds, Jack eventually moved his pelvis away but he didn’t let go of Gabriel yet. Gabriel didn’t complain. He even added ten extra seconds to his count.

“Okay, let me go now,” he said eventually.

“Sorry,” Jack mumbled as he released Gabriel.

“It’s fine,” Gabriel replied, falling on his back. “I slept like a baby, and that’s thanks to you and your big, strong arms, so it’s fine, don’t worry.” A quick look told him Jack was still sleepy, his eyes unfocused, his hair a fluffy blond mess and his cheek red with the mark of the sheet. That was cute – then again, Jack was handsome. Gabriel ignored it. “I don’t want to see you wasted like that ever again,” he warned Jack. “You do what you want on your free time, that’s your business, but during an operation...”

“That was an operation?” Jack interrupted, rubbing his eyes.

Gabriel frowned and turned his head to Jack. “Of course it was,” he said. “Why else would I spend time and money with people I don’t know rather than catching up with my best friend?” Jack opened big eyes and stayed silent. “What?” Gabriel grumbled, lost on this one.

“I’m your best friend?” Jack asked, almost whispering.

“Yeah.”

“But you said we barely know each other,” Jack said, “and that’s kinda true. I – I know basically nothing about you.”

“You know more than most,” Gabriel shrugged. “Besides, there won’t be any quiz, Indie, so don’t worry.”

Jack had a nervous chuckle. “I, huh, okay.”

“Cool,” Gabriel continued, pushing that aside. “So, I don’t want to see you hammered on the job, understood?”

“Yessir,” Jack replied with a mock salute, “but if I may, Sir, I didn’t know we were working, Sir.”

“That was pretty obvious,” Gabriel said, pushing on his arms to sit against the bedhead. Jack shook his head. “Well, I thought it was. My bad.”

He scratched his chin. He tended to forget Jack could be thick at times. He was far from an idiot, otherwise Gabriel wouldn’t like being around him, but Jack didn’t know how to read between the lines. He was trusting and gave people the benefice of the doubt, even if it was pretty obvious they’d fuck him over. Was it naivete? Gabriel didn’t think so. Jack was just a good guy who didn’t see why people would be mean to him.

Okay, maybe he was naive.

“I should tell you why I picked you instead of Thompson, I think,” Gabriel continued.

“I – I was kinda curious about that, to be honest,” Jack said, nervously rubbing his stubble.

So he didn’t figure it out. That didn’t really surprise Gabriel. He’d have to be open with Jack if he wanted this operation to work. That went against everything Gabriel had learned in the recent years, but he needed Jack more than he needed to keep secrets. He had nobody to report them to now anyway.

“Thompson was a better pick than you on paper, that much is true,” Gabriel said without sugarcoating it. “He’s a Marine, he’s tougher, he has five years of experience on you, always aced everything he did, went to real hot situations, and he also dabbles in communications and infiltration techniques.”

“Okay,” Jack said, winded. “But?”

“But he doesn’t have your charisma,” Gabriel continued and Jack looked hurt for a second.

“So you picked me because I’m a pretty boy?” he tried to joke nonetheless.

“I picked you because I want you to be the heart of the team, and I know you can do it. I don’t even have to command you to, you’ll become exactly that. People naturally like you, Jack, while people like Thompson and I have to work to be liked.”

“Yeah, I wonder why,” Jack chuckled but it was forced.

He pushed the sheet back and got out of bed. His hair was all messed up and his shirt wrinkled. Gabriel wasn’t bothered by the comment – why would he be bothered by something he already knew?

“You’re angry,” he noticed nonetheless. It was better to take the lid off now than let it boil.

“Yes I am,” Jack replied, stopping on his way to the bathroom. He pushed his fluffy hair back before throwing his arms in the air out of frustration. “That’s all? That’s why you picked me?”

“It’s an important skill,” Gabriel shrugged.

“What if I’m not good enough on the field?” Jack asked, pointing at the window. “What if someone dies because I’m not as good as Thompson? Will my charisma matter then?”

“I told you, if someone dies, it’s on me, not on you.”

“It kind of is because I’m the medic, Gabe!”

“And I’m your superior officer,” Gabriel insisted, “so it’s on me. I know you’ll do your best, and if shit happens, shit happens. I’m not asking you for miracles.”

Jack glared at Gabriel, unsatisfied by the answer, but didn’t say anything. He just stared, crossing his arms, hair sticking up on the back of his head. Gabriel did his best to hide his smile.

“You’re gonna do great, Jack,” Gabriel reassured him. “I wouldn’t have picked you if I wasn’t a hundred percents sure of what you’re capable of. Your charisma is the little something that put you on top of my list of candidates, that’s all.”

“Fine,” Jack sighed angrily after a moment. “So I’m the anti-Gabe, the guy the team likes and talks shit about their commanding officer with?”

“I don’t intend to be that tyrannic,” Gabriel chuckled, “and I’d discourage any kind of shittalking, it’s counter-productive. But yeah, I’m the hard-ass, you’re the sweetheart, kinda. Mean daddy and cool daddy,” he added with a wink.  
Jack glared back at him and resumed his walk to the bathroom.

 

End of conversation, Gabriel guessed. He didn’t wait for Jack to get out. He knew his routine anyway, so Jack would probably go running for an hour or so. Gabriel took his glasses from the bedside table, grabbed his boots and his hoodie from the floor and headed to his room, enjoying the lush carpets on his way. Jack had been assigned a room a floor under the one reserved to the American delegation. Gabriel took the elevator and found his way without any problem nor seeing anyone – not that he cared much, there were plenty of reasons why he’d be carrying his boots and look all messy after a night in the town.

Well. No, not really.

Did it matter? Not really either, he decided as he unlocked his door. His suite was composed of two rooms and a bathroom. He had just thrown his bag in the bedroom and crashed there the previous day. He didn’t intend to stay here long. It was all well and nice but they couldn’t work correctly in the middle of so many civilians. He needed a shooting range, for once, and he doubted he’d be allowed to fire his gun in the well tended gardens around the headquarters. Plus he needed personnel – who would care for Wilhelm’s armor? who would prepare their weapons, make sure they had enough ammunition and food? He estimated between ten and twenty people, depending on Buissot’s generosity. Switzerland had plenty of bunkers in the mountains all around the country, some had been abandoned for years before the war had started, so surely Buissot could find him something.

Gabriel brushed his teeth while he mentally prepared his list of requests. When time came to shave his beard, he looked in the mirror for a minute and decided to just trim it. His eyes fell on the reflection of his tattoo – an anatomical drawing of a heart above his heart surrounded by a crown. He should call his mom too, but she was probably still in her office and she didn’t like to be called at work, so he pushed that to a later date. Besides, he wanted to talk to Cara, not his mom, but he’d have to wait for her to send a message first.

A vigorous knock on his door made Gabriel jump. Who would ask to see him before 6AM? Amari, maybe, she seemed like the kind to have an agenda, much like Liao – that was fucking great, by the way. Gabriel loved the fact that his teammates had been tasked to spy on him behind his back. Well, they probably weren’t interested in him specifically, the Program was most likely their target. He’d have to warn Jack about that. Not that Jack would talk about it, he knew when to shut his mouth, especially because he had been told to, but some stuff could slip. Stuff always slipped.

Gabriel realized he was still shirtless when he opened the door, but he decided it didn’t matter. It could even be useful, depending on who was behind the door. To his surprise, it was Jack in his running gear, still angry, but anger was suddenly replaced by surprise too. They had shared a room for six months, they had dressed and undressed in front of each other, they had showered in the same bathroom block, yet Jack was taken aback in this very moment. Gabriel found it amusing. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe just to have a little more fun.  
“Hey soldier,” he said with the most suave voice he could summon. Jack glared back at him again. He raised his index finger in a “you’re in trouble mister” way, lips tights, cheeks puffing. Cute. “Round two?” Gabriel asked, highly entertained.

“Yes!” Jack shouted, and he entered the room with a conquering stride that didn’t quite fit with his shorts and tank top. Jack looked around the office part of the suite as Gabriel closed the door, and eventually settled for standing up and putting his fists on his hips. “Are you manipulating me?” he asked angrily. Gabriel blinked, taken aback. “Answer me!” Jack demanded. “Are you also playing with me like you play with everybody? Why didn’t you tell me yesterday’s dinner was a sort of way to test the waters with the team members? Were you even sincere when you said you were my best friend ten fucking minutes ago?”

“Hm,” Gabriel said to gain a second to think about how to appropriately answer.

“Oh fuck,” Jack groaned, deflating.

“Hey, wait a second now,” Gabriel chuckled nervously, “let a guy find his words, would you? There’s a lot to unpack here.”

Jack snorted and sank into a chair at the desk, paler than usual. Gabriel asked him to wait just a second so he could grab a shirt, but it was just another way to get a moment to put some order in his mind. First of, what the fuck. Where did that come from? That one was kind of a given: Gabriel had spent the six months of the Program playing with his potential competitors and Jack had witnessed it. Heck, he had even helped a few times, but Gabriel had asked him to. He had not tried to mess with Jack though, because Jack hadn’t really been competition. Jack had been part of the Fifty-and-under group, the not-so-qualified soldiers who had been selected for the Program not for their strategic abilities but for their blunt endurance and fighting skills, the brawlers. Gabriel had been part of the first group, the brainers, those selected for their intellectual skills. Each brainer had been paired with a brawler, Gabriel with Jack, and they had had to work together in a mini-unit most of the time. At first, Gabriel had thought it was to remind the brainers that they still had to remember what they were fighting with, people, people who could fail to understand, people with emotions and feelings and a family to go back to, but he came to think the brawlers were just an hindrance in many cases. Luckily for him, Jack was a great guy – a bit nosy but that had been fun too. He may not have been the sharpest tool, but he was willing to try again and again until he got it. Jack was the kind of guy to go all the way, no matter what, even if he knew it was too hard for him. More importantly, he was someone Gabriel could rely on. Trust.

Did he ever tell him that? Gabriel wasn’t exactly the most talkative guy when it came to feelings. He probably didn’t tell Jack how much he trusted him or liked him for that matter.

“Okay”, Gabriel said as he came back to the office, his shirt on. He felt unnerved and his head was heavy. Maybe it was because he was hungry or thirsty, but he turned back to his room to grab his glasses by habit. He didn’t really need them since the Program, thanks gene therapy, but it was an old habit he had. He didn’t feel like himself if he didn’t wear his glasses or lenses. “Okay,” he repeated, walking to the other chair in front of Jack on the same side of the desk. He sat, looking at Jack. Still pale, still shaken. Shit. Gabriel dragged his chair a bit closer. “So,” he said, “to answer your questions, no, I am not manipulating you.” Jack looked at him nervously. “I am telling you the truth,” Gabriel insisted. “I told you guys we’d have a meeting, sure I decided on a whim to go to a restaurant for that, but to me it was still work. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, I’ll be more careful in the future about it, and of course you can call me out whenever you feel like I’m not being sincere enough with you. I’ll happily answer your questions.” Jesus, that sounded like couple therapy. “I’m sorry Jack,” Gabriel added. “I didn’t mean to put you in that situation.”

“Why did you wait until this morning to tell me that you wanted me to be ‘the heart of the team’?” Jack asked. “We were stuck in a plane for ten hours, for fuck’s sake.”

“I didn’t want to put pressure on you,” Gabriel answered. “You know, it’s like when you tell your friend to be cool in front of the other kids and suddenly that friend is sweating and babbling and all of high school is ruined for you,” he joked.

“Like you had friends in high school,” Jack snorted.

“I wasn’t exactly popular, that’s true,” Gabriel smiled. “I find it difficult to connect to people in a meaningful way, with a few exceptions. Cara and Lupita are two exceptions, and you’re one too.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Gabriel repeated for clarification. “Why do I like you?”

“Yeah!” Jack insisted, frowning. “I’m not smart, I’m not...”

“There’s different kinds of intelligence,” Gabriel cut him short. “You’re not the kind to play chess or recite the first hundred decimals of Pi, so what? You can do other stuffs I can’t, like determine in a heart beat what’s going to kill your patient, or keep going even if the odds are totally and utterly against you. I like your will and your tenacity, Jack. You’re up for any challenge, even if it’s befriending the asshole you’ve been assigned as your roommate. This is important to me.”

“So I’m an idiot who can’t take no as an answer,” Jack resumed, crossing his arms.

“With a great ass,” Gabriel added with a wink.

Jack twitched slightly, amused but trying to keep an angry face. Gabriel let a wide smile spread slowly on his face. It took three seconds but Jack cracked eventually.

“Damn right.”

Gabriel breathed again. He leaned in his chair, a little more comfortable.

“I value your friendship, Jack,” Gabriel continued. “I honestly don’t think I could do this without you, because I know you’ll call me out on my bullshit and you’ll pick me up when I fall. I trust you with my life and I genuinely like you. If the term best friend bothers you, that’s fine, I won’t use it anymore.”

“It’s just that it surprised me,” Jack grumbled, looking elsewhere. “I know nothing about you, Gabe, how can I be your best friend?”

“It’s not about knowing, it’s about trust.”

“Yeah, okay, but to me knowing stuff about you also matters,” Jack insisted. “How – I need that stuff to react accordingly, you know? Like, the subjects to avoid, the stuff that makes you happy, feel safe and comfortable, you know? How can I be your best friend without knowing all of that?”

“I told you, it’s a matter of trust for me,” Gabriel said.

“But how did I earn that trust?” Jack asked, almost whining.

“Dunno. How did I earn your trust?” Gabriel retorted to avoid answering Jack’s question.

Jack stared at him, knowing perfectly what Gabriel was doing. He eventually sighed out of frustration.

“Goddammit, Gabe.”

“Look,” Gabriel said, “I got a lot to do today and I’d like to get started, so let’s plan a boys’ night to talk about whatever you want, okay? We’ll have candy and ice cream, watch a movie and we’ll prank-call cute boys until we wall asleep in our matching PJs. Sounds good?”

“Sure,” Jack grunted.

“It’s a date then.”

Jack sighed again, annoyed, and stood up to head out.

 

 

Gabriel took a second to push all of that in a corner of his mind for later analysis, got rid of his jeans and jumped into his own sweatpants, keeping the same T-shirt. He left his glasses on the bedside table with his phone before exiting the room. Fifteen minutes and a hundred corridors and stairs later, he eventually found the gym in the basement. There already were a few people in the room, mostly guys from the military delegations but also a few civilians he had not seen yet. Gabriel saluted his fellow compatriots as he walked past them, gave the stink-eye to Thompson on the way, and aimed for the benches in the back. There laid a giant, pushing what looked like around five hundred pounds of metal, a big smile on his face, like it was nothing.  
The Talk needed to happen.

“Hey there,” he saluted, walking to the Crusader, hands in his pockets.

“Ah, Commander!” Wilhelm replied, still pushing and pushing and pushing. “Good morning!”

“’morning. Where’s your spotter? Need some help?”

“No, thank you,” Wilhelm said with enthusiasm. “I don’t need one.”

“We all need a little help sometimes,” Gabriel commented. Subtleties weren’t this guy’s _forte_ , so why would he bother?

Wilhelm stopped pushing. He put the bar down on the rack and sat up. Even sitting on the bench, he looked gigantic. Gabriel was a little taller than average everywhere he went, and buff with that, but he felt kind of puny and vulnerable compared to the German.

Wilhelm looked at him straight in the eyes, his left missing, the scar still fresh. It was a few days old only. From what Gabriel had read, Wilhelm had refused an implant, even stitches. He wanted the disability, the scar. A reminder.

“Do you think I’m stupid, Commander?” Wilhelm asked.

Gabriel was a bit taken aback by the question, but he had a great poker face so it didn’t show.

“I know you can’t compete with Lindholm or me, but that doesn’t make you an idiot,” Gabriel replied with a shrug.

Wilhelm smirked. “That’s the answer of someone who thinks the other is an idiot. But I know why you are here, Commander.”

“… lifting weights?” Gabriel played dumb.

“You came to tell me you don’t want me in your team,” Wilhelm retorted. “You came to fire me, like that man yesterday. You want someone else.”

Fair enough, Gabriel thought.

“The guy I wanted died in Eichenwalde,” he replied. “Because of you, if I’m to believed the paperwork.”

Wilhelm lost a bit of his smile but that only made the one remaining on his face more fierce.

“Yes, my master died,” he admitted, “and I have responsibilities in his death. That much is true. But if you think you can find a better Crusader than me, then you are also wrong, Commander.”

“That’s the thing,” Gabriel said, “I’m not wrong and I can find better than you. I can find twenty Crusaders who know their role and play it better than you. I need a shield to protect the team, not a suicidal douche looking for glory.” Wilhelm lost his smile – maybe the insult had been a little over the top. “If you think you can do your part, fine by me,” Gabriel continued, “I’m willing to give you a chance, but fuck this up once, Wilhelm, just once and I’ll let you rot in your armor like you let Von Adler in Eichenwalde.”

That shut the Crusader’s mouth. Gabriel hated all this alpha male bullshit. That was one thing he couldn’t stand in the army: the one shouting the loudest was the one in charge. It was ridiculous.

“Look,” he continued on a more relaxed tone, “we’re six in this mess and we have to stick together if we want to accomplish anything. Four of us have a solid military background. Liao has some experience in the field, but he mostly worked in tech and espionage. Lindholm is a civilian, he made weapons but he never fired one. It’s up to us to keep them alive for them to be useful, to do their job, to help us in the end. You, as a Crusader, will be our front line, obviously, but if our front line suddenly fly into the distance on its own with no call or no backup, we’re gonna be in trouble. Some of us will die. You first, probably.” Gabriel let that sit for a second. “We have to work together,” he insisted. “I don’t expect glory, but if there is ant, it’ll be shared.” He had a small corner smile. “Although, I’m not into honor and all that stuff, so if you want my share, I’ll give it to you gladly. I don’t do well in the spotlights.”

“I thought so,” Wilhelm snorted, not at all phased by Gabriel’s monologue. “You’re the kind of guy who doesn’t play nice.” He stood up, towering more than a foot above Gabriel. He had to look down to meet his Commander’s gaze, not that he really tried. “I don’t either,” Wilhelm continued, pointing his thumb at his enormous chest. “The Omnics created a new model just to counter me. They didn’t do that because I was nice to them, and I don’t intend to be gentle with them.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Gabriel said, keeping his face vaguely annoyed. “I’m asking you to play with your team. Can you do that?”

Wilhelm hovered over Gabriel for a moment, maybe a bit disappointed his big muscles were not impressing his new Commander. He eventually moved to the side, offering the bench to Gabriel with an arm wide open.

“I can,” Wilhelm said.

Subtext: lay there and let me show you you can trust me when there’s literally five hundred pounds of metal over your thorax. Gabriel didn’t want to lift weights so early in the morning but he had to prove a point, he guessed. He sat on the bench and laid down while Wilhelm went to his head.

“How much do you usually lift, Commander?”

“About four hundred,” Gabriel answered, looking at Wilhelm’s crotch – it was too damn early for that, goddammit.

“Really?” Wilhelm asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Gabriel frowned. He wasn’t that puny, was he? “I usually bench above three hundred easy, but my best was at four hundred and fifty, and I kinda feel like I have to prove something now that I’m laying down there with a Crusader as my spotter,” he joked.

Wilhelm laughed, a big, booming belly laugh. Gabriel put his hands on the bar and was expecting Wilhelm to remove some weight, but the Crusader did the opposite. Gabriel realized his mistake. He had used the imperial system – goddammit America! Four hundred pounds weighted around one hundred and eighty kilograms. Gabriel could lift that, no problem, but the bar was now fitted with four hundred _kilograms_ , or over height hundred pounds. It curved slightly down now that he paid attention to it. Gabriel didn’t know what was the world record for weight lifting but he was pretty sure it was way lower than eight hundred pounds. He could back down and explain how retrograde his country was for not using the metric system, that would be a fun story to tell at breakfast, but he also felt compelled to be a stupid manly man. He tightened his grip on the metal bar and chose to be a dumbass.

 

The good thing was, Gabriel had probably gained Wilhelm’s respect since this kind of stupid grand gesture was to his liking. The bad thing was, Gabriel had probably cracked a few ribs and would be in pain whenever he was breathing for the next few weeks. No big deal, on average a human only breathed twenty-three thousand times a day.

“’ _ahlaan_ ,” Amari saluted as she put her tray down on the table.

“’morning,” Gabriel replied and it hurt. As it turned out, speaking also involved air moving through his lungs at some point. That was great.

“Something wrong?” Amari asked.

Note to self, Gabriel thought because thinking didn’t hurt, Amari notices the little things. That was good actually, her job required that talent, but he’d have to be careful around her.

“I think I bruised a few ribs this morning,” Gabriel said – ouch – and that made Wilhelm chuckle a little.

Amari looked surprised, first at the news, then by Wilhelm’s reaction. She quickly regained her usual smug smile though.

“Sounds like you boys had fun.”

“Yeah, that was fucking hilarious,” Gabriel replied and kept digging into his scrambled eggs.

Breakfast went on in silence for the next ten minutes, until Liao and Lindholm arrived in the vast cafeteria. Amari waved at them and they joined the table a few minutes later with their own trays. Gabriel looked at his watch and estimated Jack would finish his run in thirty minutes. He really wanted Jack to come back right now though. Jack would chit-chat with the team, and Gabriel could kick back and observe, but for now, Gabriel only wanted to wolf down his breakfast, go back to his room and work. The weather was nice today so he’d probably grab lunch and eat in the park. Jesus, he hadn’t done that in months, over a year even. His last rotation home had been at the beginning of August of the previous year – he had called in a few favors to be home for Lulu’s birthday, but he had missed his in October, and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year. By the time he had been authorized to go home for a week, Freeman had walked into the com tent to talk about a new project of the army, a program to enhance soldiers for the war, make them stronger, faster and more resilient, nothing that interested Gabriel.

“But what if I told you they’re looking for smart guys?” Freeman had asked.

“There’s smarter than me,” Gabriel had answered with a shrug, too busy studying the holomap on the table – he liked the new shiny toy, but the battery didn’t last long.

“Not many,” Freeman had said. “And they can’t enhance smart. That’s why they need guys like you, Reyes.”

Gabriel had raised his eyes from the map to look at the Colonel in his dirty uniform, the fresh scar on his face still pink, even in the dark of the tent, contrasting with his ebony skin. He looked tired. He looked somewhat sorry.

“You signed me up,” Gabriel had realized. He wasn’t really angry, a bit disappointed maybe but not angry.

“I did,” Freeman had nodded. “You’re the kind of guy who can win this war, Reyes, so you’re gonna get your ass to Idaho, get enhanced or whatever, come back and win this fucking war.”

Gabriel had stayed silent for a moment. He wasn’t disappointed in Freeman, to tell the truth. He was disappointed in himself for obeying orders, for not going home to his daughter and his wife.

“You owe me,” he had warned Freeman.

Freeman had laughed. “If you win the war, everybody will fucking owe you, Reyes.”

The corpses I left in Detroit probably think otherwise, Gabriel thought. He gave a quick look to his four new teammates, now talking between themselves, Amari and Lindholm having taken the lead, bickering about jam on cheese at breakfast, and wondered who would be the first to die. Lindholm, probably. Gabriel rubbed his forehead. He shouldn’t think about that kind of stuff. Casualties were inevitable, statistically speaking, but he had to keep a positive attitude. Not a problem at all, Gabriel thought with derision.

He finished his tea in silence, excused himself and left the dinning hall, trying to keep his breathing as shallow as possible. He could ignore the pain – he had once walked sixty miles with a broken ankle, so a few broken ribs was nothing at all, and he’d be dead by now if a lung had been perforated, so, really, he had nothing to worry about. He’d ask Jack for painkillers though, in case of emergency. Did Jack go running with his cellphone? He had back in Indiana, so it was probably a habit. Gabriel would send him a text later, after he’d got some work done.

 

He sent Jack a text exactly thirty-one minutes after that thought. It was technically “later” but way too soon for his liking. Fortunately, Jack was on his way back and Gabriel had only to wait fifteen agonizing minutes until he saw his friend enter the suite again, a lot sweatier than before, his face and neck a bit red due to the effort.

“What’s up?” Jack asked, walking to Gabriel who had found a position not too uncomfortable at the desk. He had got his laptop out and a bunch of papers around, but he had been incapable of focusing on it so far. Every time he had tried, the pain had come back.

“Toxic masculinity got me,” Gabriel joked poorly.

“What?”

“I tried to lift four hundred pounds, except Wilhelm understood four hundred kilograms,” Gabriel explained, feeling stupid all over again. “Funny thing, really.”

“W-what’s that in pounds?” Jack hesitated.

“Eight hundred eighty-two-ish.”

Jack whitened instantly. “Jesus, Gabe...” He came closer, took a knee and lifted Gabriel’s Tshirt high enough to see the damage. Gabriel lifted his arms at bit and regretted it immediately. The low staccato in his chest was gaining in rapidity by the second now. He could only see bruises though, already dark – was it supposed to be this dark this fast? didn’t that mean something was broken? Wilhelm had grabbed the bar when he had realized Gabriel wouldn’t be able to lift it, but he had only slowed its fall. It turned out four hundred kilograms were also a bit too much for a Crusader. It was comforting knowing even that big bag of muscles had a limit.

“Yeah, I’m not proud of this one,” Gabriel admitted as Jack’s warm hands touched his chest delicately, searching for a dent or a swelling, Gabriel wasn’t sure. It hurt, like electricity going through him from each fingertip. “Did you know NASA sent a probe to Mars like forty years ago,” Gabriel said to keep his mind busy, “but they had worked on it with a European team, so they had mixed the units and the probe never reached the planet? Same shit happened here.”

“You have to define units for the team then,” Jack commented, feeling Gabriel’s sides now.

“Yeah, that would be smart,” Gabriel agreed, closing his eyes and trying to remember the name of that probe. “Sadly for you, we dumb Americans will have to switch to the metric system.”

“Why us?”

“Because four of the six members of the team already use it. It’s more efficient that way. Besides, the metric system is more precise and rigorous.”

“Sounds like something you’ll love,” Jack smirked.

“Ah,” Gabriel sighed and fuck it hurt so much, “if only I weren’t married already.”

Jack shook his head, amused, and got back on his feet.

“I don’t think you have anything broken or any internal bleeding, but I’d like to confirm with an X-ray. There’s probably one in the headquarters, they have a small ward.”

“Being a diplomat has its perks,” Gabriel commented as he slowly pushed his shirt down. Moving his arms was a pretty terrible idea but he couldn’t keep them at shoulder level indefinitely.

“Yeah. Otherwise, we’ll have to find the closest ER. I can prescribe you painkillers though.”

“Can you deliver too?”

“I don’t have my medical kit with me, so no, but I’ll find you some.”

“Alright,” Gabriel acquiesced, already counting the seconds separating him from the bliss the painkillers would bring him. He stood up, helping himself with an arm on the desk. Jack was looking at him with a rare intensity. “What?” Gabriel asked with a shaking smile.

“You’re in a lot of pain.”

“No shit,” Gabriel grinned, walking to the door, his arms around his middle.

“I’ve seen you get kicked in the balls and show less emotion than that,” Jack commented, following him close enough to catch him if anything happened.

“’cause my dick’s always rock hard, that’s why,” Gabriel tried to joke but a white hot flash of pain stroke him and he had to reach for Jack’s arm to not fall. Breathing hurt more and more, and he was sweating. In fact, he felt feverish, his legs shacking and his thorax burning. “Something’s wrong,” Gabriel hissed, his lungs trying their hardest to catch a breath. “Jack!”

“It’s okay, I’m here,” Jack said on an even voice, passing an arm around Gabriel’s shoulders. He helped him walk the five feet – one meter and a half – to the closest chair, made sure he wouldn’t fall and went to the nearest dresser, where there was a tray with glasses and stuff like that. It somehow infuriated Gabriel to see Jack be so cool and above it all, because he personally felt incapable of doing anything. His heartbeat was going crazy, the pain in his chest was hot iron poured into his bones, he could barely breath and Jack was giving him a fucking glass of water. Gabriel shook his head, too breathless to speak. Jack took his phone from his pocket to call someone, taking his sweet fucking time while looking down at Gabriel who was suffocating. White spots appeared in his field of vision. Oh shit, he thought, I’m going down.

 

Gabriel woke up in a white-blue-ish room to the sound of a regular beep somewhere on his left. His mouth felt parched and his head was heavy, like he had been awaken in the middle of a cycle. There was a needle in his left arm – he knew the feeling all too well and didn’t need to check visually. The room was pretty packed with shiny equipment that had seen very few to no action. There was no window, only the LED spots here and there on the low ceiling where all sorts of cables and pipes had their fun. The good news was, he had found the HQ’s ward.

Well. Tomatoes, tomatoes.

There were voices in the room or corridor behind the door Gabriel could see on his left. He thought he heard Jack’s low, warm laugh but it could have been anyone considering how disoriented he felt. It’d be nice if it was Jack though. Gabriel didn’t want to talk to any doctor, especially one not up to date with the Program. That was one of the reasons he had chosen Jack: technically, he was a medic, and he had been _through_ the Program, he hadn’t had fun doing experiments on the hundred soldiers at the disposal of the government. Jack wouldn’t take notes and find Gabriel’s response to gene therapy “fascinating”. Jack would understand. Jack would be on his side.

Gabriel pushed on his right arm to sit, and realized two things while doing so. First, it didn’t hurt. Second, he was shirtless. He looked at his chest only to see some days old hematoma where his skin had been a raging purpul-ish black last time he had checked – had he been out for days? Gabriel dragged his eyes to the IV. It was just a bag of saline with no other indication, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t injected him previously with something for the pain – whoever that was, Gabriel was grateful. His lungs weren’t on fire anymore each time he breathed, which was a wonderful sensation.

There was a call button on the bedside table, the kind with a cord that came out of the wall above the head of the bed. Gabriel hesitated – maybe he could sneak out of the ward and go back to his room, but it was more his hatred for the medical profession at large speaking than reason, so he pushed the damn button. The door opened a second later on Jack, still in his shorts and tank top, and, sadly, on Thompson, also in his sportswear. Gabriel gave him the stink-eye again, just because.

“Welcome back to the living, Reyes,” Thompson smirked, closing the door behind him.

“Fuck off,” Gabriel replied. He turned to Jack. “Where’s my shirt?”

“We had to cut it open,” Jack said.

“What? It was my only egg yolk shirt!” Gabriel complained. “Do you know how hard it is to find a color that compliment my skin that well?” Jack stared at him. “I’m being serious,” Gabriel insisted, really annoyed. Without that one, his shirt gradient would make no sense at all.

“I’ll find you another one,” Jack sighed, frowning.

“Anyway,” Thompson interrupted, “you did scare us, Reyes.”

“Oh yeah? You looked at my dick, Thompson?” Gabriel replied.

“Gabe, please,” Jack intervened, “this is serious.”

Gabriel sighed angrily. He wanted to get out of the ward, right now. He could already feel his pulse fastening, and the beep-beep-beep of the machine connected to him was aggravating the feeling. Gabriel removed the clip attached to his finger and the machine protested until Jack shut it down. He wanted to tear off the perfusion too but Jack wouldn’t be this casual about it.

“Let me go,” Gabriel commanded.

Thompson and Jack exchanged a quick look, and Thompson took a step back.

“Something went wrong, Gabe,” Jack said on his “I’m being serious” tone.

“Okay,” Gabriel replied, his patience thinning pretty fast. “Let me go and let’s talk about it elsewhere.”

“This room is not bugged,” Thompson said, “that’s why we’re keeping you here. Otherwise, believe me I would have kicked you out long ago.”

Bugged?

Was his suite bugged?

Why?

And who was interested in what he could say and do in his room?

All the fucking world, probably.

Fuck.

“Look, Gabe,” Jack started again, “you fainted and we don’t know why. The X-ray showed nothing and you weren’t bleeding internally.”

“I think it was a panic attack,” Thompson commented with a smirk.

“And I think your body shut down because of the effort it had to produce to heal you this fast,” Jack added.

Gabriel frowned.

“Which is more likely,” Thompson admitted bitterly, “you know, considering the Program and all the shit they pumped into us.”

“That would explain why your hematoma is fading so fast,” Jack continued. “It’s been less than an hour and you can barely see it already.”

“What that supposed to happen?” Gabriel asked, focusing on the ugly linoleum on the ground.

Thompson and Jack stayed silent for a second.

“We… don’t know,” Thompson eventually said. “We were experimented on and kept in the dark, much like you.”

“The gene therapy had some visible impact on us all,” Jack added. “We are more resilient, faster, stronger...”

“And you wouldn’t know because you’re going all caveman but cuts from shaving actually heal faster from what I noticed,” Thompson interjected.

“But we didn’t get hurt during the Program,” Jack continued. “Not really, I mean. We got bruises and scratches, but nobody got really hurt.”

“Nobody got crushed by eight hundred eighty-two-ish pounds of metal,” Thompson smirked.

“This isn’t true,” Gabriel interrupted them, annoyed by the back-and-forth. “Subjects died. Twenty-two percents.”

“Gene editing is not an exact science,” Thompson explained. “This is not comparable to your accident.”

“But they knew,” Gabriel frowned. “They had to know. They probably tested it too.”

“We don’t know,” Jack said after a moment of hesitation, “and we can’t know.”

“Yes we can,” Gabriel retorted.

“I’m not going to dig into my superiors’ dirty little secrets,” Thompson shrugged, “but if you wanna, please don’t tell me. I’m alive and that’s enough for me.”

“How queer of you,” Gabriel snorted.

“I’m not going to ask around either, Gabe,” Jack added. “It’s going to be too much trouble.”

“Not for me,” Gabriel grinned. “I’m a big shot now, remember?”

“For you too,” Jack insisted. “Until the war is over, I advise you to shut up and keep a low profile for your own good.”

Jack was right and it fucking hurt to admit it. Gabriel’s position was one of precarious power. He could fire a guy to hire someone he trusted instead, but he couldn’t put his nose everywhere and demand answers. He’d have to wait until the end of the war before kicking the anthill.

“Don’t worry,” Jack said, locking eyes with him. “I’m with you, so you’re not gonna die.”

“Probably.”

“Probably.”

Gabriel shared a small amused smile with Jack. Was he scared? No, not really. Dying on the job had always been an option, and Gabriel was fine with that. Knowing that Jack would do anything to prevent that was comforting though. Knowing that Jack could joke about it was a nice perk.

Knowing he could get revenge after the war for whatever they had done to him was the best news of the day.

“Aww, you guys are so cute.”

“Fuck off, Thompson,” Gabriel and Jack yelled at the same time.

 

Gabriel made a show of letting his pile of papers fall on Buissot’s desk. She looked totally impermeable to this kind of dramatic reveal.

“Requests and budgets,” Gabriel said, taking a step back, “as promised.”

“It’s 11:58PM,” Buissot noted.

“Yep.”

“Couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?” she asked, still dead serious.

“Nope,” Gabriel replied, popping the p, “but I can take it back, go wait two extra minutes in the corridor and come back in your office if you want it tomorrow.”

Buissot looked at him for a moment.

“You’re a funny guy, aren’t you?”

“I use humor as a deflector, ma’am,” Gabriel said, standing at parade rest, chin high, for the fun of it.

“Is it working?”

Oh, nice burn, Gabriel thought, amused. He smirked.

Buissot leaned more comfortably in her chair. If she was tired, it didn’t show. Her make up was still pristine, her hair clean and her suit impeccable. That didn’t really surprise Gabriel. Being a woman with such a high position meant she experienced tremendous pressure everyday. She was under scrutiny at all time, like he probably was. In that, Gabriel could find kinship with Buissot.

“We’re in the same boat, mister Reyes,” Buissot eventually said. “Let’s be friends.”

“If you’re asking me to do you a _favor_ , I regret to inform you I’m married and devoted to my wife, but thank you for your interest, it’s flattering,” Gabriel replied, and he added before Buissot could snap at him: “And if you’re asking me to play politics, the answer is also no. I don’t like to get fucked, ma’am.”

“Understandable,” Buissot nodded. “So let’s be… allies. No dick in the ass by surprise.”

“That I can do, ma’am.”

“Good.” She took the first sheet of the two hundred pages report in front of her. “I’ll review that with you tomorrow,” she said calmly. Gabriel took that as his queue to leave, but her smirk caught his attention. “Oh, look at that,” she added, pointing at the clock on the wall. “It is tomorrow. Sit down and let’s have a talk.”

Gabriel stood for a second before grabbing the nearest chair.

“I like you,” he said casually.

“I’m married and also devoted to my wife, mister Reyes,” Buissot replied without looking at his big smile.

That was going to be an interesting relationship, Gabriel decided.

 

TBC


	4. Torbjörn

_Rinse and Repeat_  
Chapter 4  
Torbjörn

 

Torbjörn was awaken by a knock on his door and Morrison saying “five minutes”, like every morning for the past three days. Everything hurt. His ears were ringing, his arms were sore, his right hand felt like stone, his legs cramped and his back was killing him. That was not mentioning the heavy head due to dehydration and the lack of sleep. Torbjörn wanted to tell the American to go get himself a new one, but then he’d have to deal with the Commander. Morrison was a nice enough guy, quick to smile, laugh, and encourage his teammates. More importantly, he followed orders. Reyes was the one giving them. Torbjörn had trouble figuring out this man. Smart enough, Torbjörn had figured out, but the cold kind of intelligence, the kind that saw assets before people. And right now, Torbjörn was not a great asset, as he was reminded by Morrison opening the door.

“Let’s go Lindholm,” the American said, a black silhouette against the vicious lights of the corridor.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Torbjörn grunted, throwing away the covers.

“You know the rule,” Morrison continued. “One minute late, one more kilometer to run.”

“I’m coming!” Torbjörn yelled back, jumping into his baskets.

He had gone to bed in his sweatsuit because he didn’t want to add to the five kilometers run – it was hard enough for him. Torbjörn left his miserable room behind him and followed Morrison, already at the end of the corridor with the rest of the team. Even the Commander was running with them, and anybody on the base could join if they wanted, but no new recruit had wanted to wake up at five in the morning to go run in the cold of the Swiss Alps in October, strangely. This morning was as freezing as the others. It would get better during the day even at this altitude, thanks global warming, but the sun wasn’t up yet and Torbjörn could see his breath floating away in the breeze. He could also see a lot of stars, so high up. There was little light pollution around. The closest village was a fifteen minutes drive away, down in the valley. You couldn’t see it from here. The base was close to the top of the mountain, but the view was blocked by the lake. It wasn’t a natural one. A small dam camouflaged into rocks and whatnot had been installed to generate electricity for the base when it had been constructed, some fifty years ago – clever thing, very Swiss. The little rivers coming from all around had filled the hole, but most of the water came from the snow in winter. The base was high enough to be covered by up to ten meters of snow each winter, also thanks to global warming. Summers were a lot hotter than last century’s, breaking records every year, with droughts getting worse, and melting glaciers higher and higher, but the winters, the winters were something else entirely. Polar vortexes bringing temperatures well below zero crept a little more south every time, with snowstorms that paralyzed whole countries for weeks, destroying infrastructures and freezing people to death. Global warming his ass. It had been a pretty name for a phenomenon lobbyists had tried to bury for the sake of the great monster Capitalism. Torbjörn’s generation was paying for their parents’ and their grand-parents’ greed, with no solution in sight. “Let’s plant trees!” they said, but nobody had been willing to sacrifice half their territory to trees – worse, they kept on burning down primordial forests left and right for agriculture. Meanwhile, the frozen lands of Siberia had defrosted, allowing bacteria to transform thousands of years of accumulated biomass into methane, accelerating the greenhouse effect. They were fucked.

Oh and that was not counting for the ongoing robot apocalypse, of course.

Don’t think about that, Torbjörn pestered himself while the group started running. He took his earphones from his pocket, stuck them into his ears and connected them to his watch to listen to some music. “Music help,” Morrison had said. “Focus on the words, on the rhythm, don’t think about how many miles you have left.” It worked, Torbjörn could give him that, and he did just that. He ignored the distance growing between him and the group, he knew the 5K trail by now, and blasted Amon Amarth in his ears to drawn the tinnitus. From time to time, Morrison came back to him, ran behind him for a bit, then caught up with the rest of the group. That was fine. Torbjörn preferred to be left alone anyway.

It took him less than an hour this time to complete the five kilometers morning run. Morrison was waiting for him at the door of the hangar like always, talking with Reyes sitting on the loading platform. Reyes said something and Morrison laughed, which in turn made Reyes have that smile of his, not really a smirk, but not really a smile either, like he didn’t know how to use the fine muscles in his face. But, as soon as Reyes saw Torbjörn, he went back to his mildly annoyed expression. He stood up, patted Morrison on the shoulder and left.

“Forty-six minutes,” Morrison said with a big smile and two thumbs up. “That’s some progress!”

“Laugh all you want,” Torbjörn grunted. “I’ve never ran in my life, mind you.” He pointed at his small arched legs.

“I’m not laughing at all,” Morrison replied. “You’re doing great for a guy your age.”

Torbjörn stopped in his track and looked at Morrison.

“My age?” he repeated.

“Yeah.”

“How old do you think I am, Morrison?”

“Huh, forty-something, I guess?”

“Forty-some – forty-something!” Torbjörn yelled, his face suddenly flushed. “I’m twenty-nine!”

“What? You’re the same age as Gabe?” Morrison realized. “No, wait, he’s gonna be thirty next week, so you’re one year younger? Holy shit! I’d never guessed!”

“Didn’t you read my medical files, Morrison?” Torbjörn grunted. “You’re supposed to be my doctor, aren’t you?”

“Medic,” Morrison corrected, “it’s not quite the same, but yeah, I read it. I just didn’t pay attention to your age, is all.”

“But you know _Gabe_ ’s birthday,” Torbjörn mocked. “I see you have your priorities in order.”

Morrison had the decency to blush.

“He’s my best friend, that’s why.”

“Right,” Torbjörn replied, skeptical, crossing his arms.

“He is!” Morrison insisted, laughing out of embarrassment. “And I have a boyfriend anyway.”

Torbjörn blinked. That was new information. With his good looks, his easy smiles and his virgin naive attitude, he had thought the lad would be a ladies’ favorite, even the boy toy of some rich older woman who’d promise him to teach him everything and show him the world. Not that Morrison couldn’t do that with an older man, though.

Morrison lost his smile.

“Is that a problem?” he asked, cold, almost hostile.

“Why would it be?” Torbjörn said on the same tone.

Morrison stood there in front of him for ten seconds, jaw clenched, frowning a little, but eventually let it go. He pushed his hair back, looking elsewhere.

“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s go have some breakfast.”

And he headed for the loading dock’s entry without waiting for Torbjörn.

 

Morrison was notably less friendly that morning during training. He kept instructing Torbjörn in the gym, helped by Wilhelm, but he was a little colder, his smiles a little forced. If Wilhelm noticed, it didn’t show – he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to really care for what people thought anyway. Torbjörn had mixed feelings about the Crusader. Well, he had mixed feelings about everybody in this team but Wilhelm was on top of his list. He didn’t understand why Reyes, a very smart man who had surrounded himself with great assets, had chosen Wilhelm as his shield. The giant was brash, loud, and kind of an idiot. Torbjörn had asked him questions about his armor, and Wilhelm had brushed it off because it wasn’t his job to take care of it, he just knew how to use it, and he used it gloriously if you were to believe him.

That seemed counterproductive to Torbjörn. Wilhelm had always worked with a division following him, with other Crusaders, soldiers on foot, and a bunch of people behind them to take care of the rest. If his armor broke down during a fight, well, either he was fucked, or he’d be taken to the back line for someone to repair it. But it didn’t seem like that was Reyes’ plan. He had asked for technicians for the armor, and two would arrive the day after tomorrow from what Torbjörn had heard, but they wouldn’t come with them on the field. If the armor broke in the middle of a mission, Wilhelm would have to abandon it. Was it implied that Torbjörn would be able to repair the damn thing in the field? He’d have to get his hands on some schematics and spend a few hours with the armor first, but there was no time in his pre-mission schedule for that. Mornings were dedicated to physical training, while the afternoons were a little more technique oriented: learning how to shoot, how to take care of various weapons, hand gestures, how to survive in a hostile environment and the all of that. Torbjörn had very little free time to go and poke around the armor, and he’d rather crash into his stiff bed than go to the hangar, honestly.

They weren’t exactly fans of 9-to-5 jobs around there. It seemed liked they worked 5-to-9 actually. Sometimes, he even wondered if Reyes slept at all. One night, Torbjörn had had to get up to go to the bathroom, and he had met Reyes in the corridor, who had just gone to his room to fetch his glasses, he had said, his eyes were tired of staring at screens, but otherwise he didn’t look tired at all. Torbjörn had looked at the time back in his room after: 2AM. At 5, Reyes had ran with the team, no problem, and the day had passed for him without taking a nap. Torbjörn could not compete with that. He needed seven and a half hours of sleep to be a functioning human being, three meals a day and coffee. A lot of coffee. So far, the three meals a day part of the deal had been respected. The coffee was bad, the brown dust you’d find on the bottom rack of the shelf, but that wasn’t a surprise. Real coffee was going extinct, thanks global warming again, and it was expensive. Torbjörn had been able to pay for this luxury before, but since his arrest he had had to drink the synthetic coffee of the masses. Reyes would probably laugh at him if he requested something better than the stuff they had in the cafeteria.

Americans didn’t know what real coffee was anyway. They watered it down so much it barely had taste, and they compensated with too much sugar. Torbjörn had hated every cup of coffee he had drank in the USA, so much that he had switched to tea for the duration of his business trips. He had not enjoyed those trips, three total. The food was terrible, the transportation system archaic, the streets were crowded, dirty and noisy, and it smelled. Why those people still thought they were the leaders of Western civilization? It baffled Torbjörn. They still used fossil energies, didn’t want to switch to renewable or nuclear to limit their carbon dioxide emissions, everybody had a car or two, and not electric ones mind you, they produced so much waste every year that they could cover one of their state with a one meter tall layer of it, their health care system was a joke, and discrimination were as frequent as…

Oh.

Torbjörn looked over his plate of lab-grown chicken and potatoes to Morrison at the end of the table, talking with Reyes in front of him. Sweden had been one of the first countries in the world to recognize gay rights and legalize a bunch of stuff for same sex couples and transgender people. That didn’t mean homophobia or transphobia didn’t exist in his country, but the LGBTQ community was more protected and accepted than in many other parts of the world. Heck, even the army welcomed people of all sorts and encouraged them to be who they were. Torbjörn didn’t know much about it because it didn’t concern him directly. He had gay friends and colleagues, Ingrid’s aunt was married to a woman, but for him it was normal, and it would never occur to him to see them as less than him because of their sexual orientation. They were _people_.

But Morrison had gotten shit for being gay, hence his reaction this morning. Torbjörn felt stupid for not recognizing it sooner. He ought to apologize later. He looked around the table, wondering if he had been an asshole to someone else without knowing. Reyes had a wife and kid, so he was probably safe with him – not that he talked to the Commander much anyway. Amari had a little girl, from what he had heard. She lived in Canada with her father. Torbjörn talked a lot to Amari, she was smart and vicious, she didn’t hesitate to playfully smack him verbally when she could. He liked her, and she didn’t seem to care for his rudeness. It amused her, even, so all good on that front. It was painfully obvious Wilhelm liked women, he couldn’t stop flexing whenever there was a woman in the room, to the point Reyes would probably have to organize a seminar on sexual harassment at some point, plus he didn’t even get sarcasm so Torbjörn had no worries with him either. Liao… Liao was a mystery. And right now he was smiling at Torbjörn, who stared back and ate his tasteless chicken while the conversation continued around him.

 

Shooting the target wasn’t difficult – it was the carcass of a Bastion so Torbjörn had had no difficulty doing that once he had had a little practice with the gun. Shooting the target to do significant damage to it was another thing entirely.

Torbjörn knew the theory, knew where were the weak spots of those machines, knew how to incapacitate them by hand if needed, but aiming precisely with a gun was above his competences. Following Morrison’s orders, he had tried to aim for the head, the single eye to be precise, but so far he had only managed to hit a shoulder, the thorax, a leg and the other bullets had disappeared into the lake behind the shooting range. The worst part of it was the distance: the target was twenty meters away. In real conditions, Torbjörn would be dead. A Bastion in recon configuration could headshot a man at a fifty meters with a ninety percents accuracy. That meant nine out of ten times, if a Bastion saw you in a fifty meters radius, you were dead. At a hundred meters, the accuracy dropped to forty percents, ten percents above a hundred and fifty meters. Reaction time was also to consider. A trained man was able to recognize a threat, move his muscles to aim and shoot in a matter of microseconds – and accuracy varied widely. A Bastion did the same in nanoseconds thanks to its processors, a time a human body could not compete with. In reality, men fell dead to the ground before they could even recognize the threat.

That was what Torbjörn had to face and he felt ridiculous to even try as he put down the gun on the crate to load it up again. Fourth day of training, and this time Morrison didn’t encourage him or lied to him about his progress. Maybe it was because of this morning, but Torbjörn had the feeling it was just because Morrison knew he was helpless with a gun. Maybe Torbjörn should stop wasting his time with firearms and just learn how to run and jump on a Bastion with his hammer and screwdriver. With that he could work. Heck, give him a ruler and a pen and he’d do miracles – even if, in reality, he had never worked on paper to build anything except for doodling concepts. So, a computer with enough power to run engineering and 3D softwares, a hammer, a few meters of wires, a welding kit and he was good to go. That made him smirk as he thought about presenting his request to Reyes.

Morrison sighed.

“This isn’t working.”

Torbjörn looked at the American on his left. He was worried, frowning a bit as he stared at the target. He was in T-shirt because the shooting range was exposed to the sun in the afternoon despite the looming mass of the cave above their heads, supported by wide pillars of concrete.

“Great minds think alike,” Torbjörn replied mockingly, loading a bullet in the chamber. He liked doing that, like in the movies. He turned on his heels and aimed for the scorched Bastion. Elbow loose, hand steady. He pulled the trigger twice. The first shot touched the thorax, just ten centimeters to the left of the center. The second disappeared somewhere in the lake. “Damn recoil,” Torbjörn grumbled as he lowered the gun, his hand buzzing.

“You’re not thinking enough about it,” Reyes interrupted.

Torbjörn and Morrison turned as one to see the Commander arrive, hands in his pockets, his uniform not as sharp as it had been on the first day. It was still clean, but it hadn’t been ironed and he wore it with a few loose buttons, letting his white T-shirt show under the tactical grays.

“Not thinking enough?” Torbjörn grunted. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not using your brain,” Reyes replied as he halted next to them. “I wanted you in my team because of your intellect, not your charming personality, so use it.”

“You want me to reinvent gunpowder or something?” Torbjörn snorted. “I have a bunch of requests to submit to you later then, Commander.”

“I want you to _think_ ,” Reyes insisted. “What’s the surface area of the bullet you’re using? What’s its speed? What resistance will it encounter once fired? What’s the friction coefficient? _What will be its trajectory?_ ”

Oh.

Oh that made sense. That made a lot of sense. A bullet was just a projectile. Knowing the variables, Torbjörn could calculate its behavior. He could calculate its impact point. vx0t − CρAv²t² ÷ 2m. He had used this formula countless times – why didn’t he think about it earlier? He just had to know a few variables: travel time, coefficient of drag of the bullet, its surface area, air density and that was it. It was so easy it made Torbjörn laugh. He didn’t know all those variables on the top of his head, but he could guess. He did so, aimed again, and fired.

The bullet hit the lake with a distant “plooch”.

Reyes and Morrison sighed.

“Well,” Reyes commented, “I guess training is the way to go after all.”

“ Did you think your inspirational speech would work?” Morrison asked, clearly amused.

“I liked my odds,” Reyes replied, cheeky.

Torbjörn snorted and put down the gun again to disassemble it. He liked to do that after a new failure. It allowed him to stop for a minute and focus on something else.

Morrison shook his head, a small smile on his lips.

“What brings you down here, Commander?” Morrison asked mockingly. “Haven’t seen you in a shooting range in a while.”

“Not everybody can be as good a shot as you, Nebraska , stop bragging.” Morrison laughed. Reyes continued, stretching: “I came to take some fresh air. I’ve been stuck in the map room for three days and a half with Amari and Liao, I needed a break.”

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah, we’re almost done, a day at most. Then it depends on Lindholm.” Torbjörn could feel their eyes on the back of his neck and he hated it. “Of course I’d like to strike as soon as possible,” Reyes continued, “because the intel we have now won’t be accurate for long, but we can spare a week.”

Torbjörn snorted and turned around to look at those two big, giant idiots.

“I’m an engineer, I don’t work with a timetable.”

Morrison made a face, while Reyes remained his semi-annoyed self, but it was clear Torbjörn had stepped over the line. Reyes was pretty forgiving when it came to Morrison, but would he be the same for a subordinate? Would he take it as a joke, even if Torbjörn’s tone had clearly not be that of humor? Reyes kept on staring at Torbjörn for a minute, hands in his pockets, barely blinking.

“I understand you are under a lot of pressure and stress,” Reyes eventually said, “and I recognize you need more time to adjust and train. If it w ere up to me, I’d take the whole team to a test drive before our first mission, but I don’t have that luxury. I also happen to be under pressure, and I need results. That’s why I picked my team as you see it. You don’t need to be the best shot, Lindholm, I have Amari and Jack for that, long and close range respectively . You don’t need to be on the front line, I have Wilhelm and his shield. You don’t need to be our resident computer genius , I have Liao. You don’t need to be our tactician, that’s my job. Your job is to give us your output and share your experience o n the Omnics with us. You know how they work, you know how they’ll react better than anyone else, to the nanosecond it take them to do anything. This training,” he said, looking around, “this is for the team . We’ll protect you, but if we fail, if I die, you’re the best option for the team to survive, to take them home. So, sure, no timetable, I’m not asking you to become a marksman in a week, but give it all you got anyway because our survival is on the line. Don’t forget that.”

How could I? Torbjörn thought, but he didn’t dare say anything out loud.

Reyes didn’t give him time to pity himself though.

“You had requests?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Torbjörn hesitated, not amused at all now that he had to present his whimsical idea. “I’m an engineer, you see, not a soldier. I make weapons. I fix things.”

“Okay,” Reyes encouraged him to continue.

“So, I was thinking, I’d better bring with me my equipment. You said Liao was some kind of computer genius, which means he’s probably going to attempt to hack the Omnics around us, correct?”

“Correct,” Reyes nodded, and Torbjörn supposed the Commander knew as well as him how that usually turned out.

“He’s going to take a few things with him to work, and so should I. I can disable an Omnic with my hands, not with a gun or with a computer.”

Reyes stayed silent for a moment.

“Alright,” he eventually said. “You know what you’re good at, that’s in your favor. I’ll allow it and give you time to prepare for that, but I still want you to spend at least two hours a day in the shooting range. You might think it’s pointless but hard work pays off eventually, especially when it comes to muscle memory.”

“Deal,” Torbjörn agreed.

Morrison made a face again.

“It’s not a deal,” Reyes corrected, “it’s an order.”

“ Alright,” Torbjörn grumbled.

Reyes looked at him for a moment. Was he expecting a “Sir, yes Sir” and a salute? Torbjörn was still a civilian, technically, he didn’t have to follow the rules of decorum of a foreign country’s army, even if he was under the command of this man. He’d give him the finger, if asked, but that was it.

Reyes’s attention was caught by something else a few seconds later as he retrieved his phone from a pocket. He lost two shades when he looked at the screen.

“I-I have to take that,” he said, already walking away.

“Everything all right?” Morrison asked.

“It’s Cara,” Reyes replied over his shoulder before disappearing at the corner.

“Who’s Cara?” Torbjörn asked. The UN secretary Reyes answered to was named Alexandra, if he remembered correctly.

“His wife,” Morrison said.

“Oh.”

Torbjörn felt his chest tighten just thinking about Ingrid. He hadn’t seen her for six months already, since the trial had started. He had news from her through his lawyers, but he hadn’t been allowed to call her nor write to her. He missed her dearly, even if he tried to not think about it too much – he didn’t want to wallow about his pitiful situation. He missed the girls too. He had missed Saga’s birthday last month, and Tuva’s was coming soon. And little Nellie ! She was so young, so minuscule. Would she even recognize him? Would she ask Ingrid where was her papa when she grew up? Saga and Tuva were probably forgetting him too by now. Torbjörn had tried his best to be a good father, but he was not better than those scrappy assholes who left wives and kids behind. His only consolation was in the money he’d left them if he were to die. At least Ingrid and the girls would have a comfortable life. That’s all he could do for them from his position.

“ You have kids, Morrison?” Torbjörn asked, his mouth feeling parched.

“No,” he replied, maybe a little coldly.

“You and your boyfriend don’t want some?” Torbjörn insisted, hoping it would show he didn’t care for Morrison’s sexuality.

Morrison looked at him for a second and relaxed a bit.

“I don’t want kids,” he said, turning to the crate. “I know Vincent, my boyfriend, would like to adopt or find a surrogate mother in the future , he’s ready to settle and everything , but I guess I’m not.” He took a gun and started to disassemble it. “I l ove my job,” he continued, “I love my life as it is. Four months in, four months out, I like the rhythm. I’m not against getting married, it’d just be a formality at this point, but kids? No. I don’t have the kind of life that allows for children, I think.” He was done with the gun and started assembling it again.

“ You ever thought about quitting the army to get on with it?” Torbjörn asked, mesmerized by Morrison’s rapidity and agility with the weapon.

“It’s… a point of contention with my boyfriend, currently,” Morrison admitted. “Like I said, I love my job. Would you quit the job you love just because your partner asked you to?”

“Maybe,” Torbjörn replied after a second of reflection. “If it caused distress to Ingrid , probably, yes.”

Morrison put a charger in the gun, loaded the first bullet and shot twice the Bastion in the head, straight through the eye.

“Guess I’m just selfish then,” he said, looking at the result. He removed the charger and the bullet in the chamber before putting down the gun, under Torbjörn’s gaze. “You got kids yourself, right?”

“Yes, three girls: Saga, Tuva and Nellie. The oldest is five, the youngest eighteen months old.”

“ That’s a lot.”

“Ingrid comes from a big family and she wanted one of her own ,” Torbjörn explained, shrugging. “I love her dearly, so I complied. Not that it bothered me, if you see what I mean,” he added, attempting to joke. It didn’t work. Morrison didn’t even give him a fake smile.

“I do love my boyfriend,” he said.

“Okay?” Torbjörn hesitated, not sure where that came from.

“But that doesn’t mean I have to ‘comply’ with everything he wants.”

“I… wasn’t implying that,” Torbjörn said with caution. Morrison stared at him for a moment, then looked elsewhere, sighing angrily. “What’s going on?” Torbjörn asked, irritated by Morrison’s behavior. “Why are you so touchy suddenly?”

“I...” Morrison started, but he stopped, clicked his tongue, shifted his weight. “Things are not great with Vince right now,” he eventually admitted, “and I can’t believe I’m talking to you about that.”

“Gabe’s on the phone,” Torbjörn snorted, “that’s why.”

Morrison made a face, pushed his hair back and sat on the crate, arms crossed.

“I was supposed to call him when I landed but I didn’t,” Morrison said, a mix of anger and shame on his face.

Torbjörn sat next to him, with less grace and a little more effort. The damn thing was military grade, a meter twenty in height, when he was only a meter forty tall on a good day.

“I haven’t talked to my wife since last February,” Torbjörn said.

“It’s not the same,” Morrison clicked. “You can’t. I just have to pick up the phone and do it, but I don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I was an asshole all the time I spent home since my release from the P – since my release, and I was super excited to leave when Gabe showed up,” Morrison explained, shame gaining on the anger. “Vince gave me all his love and patience and understanding, and I just wanted to get the fuck out of there and go back on the front.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Right? I treated him like shit just out of frustration and I hate myself for that.”

“ Call him and apologize,” Torbjörn advised. “That’s a start.”

“It’s not that simple,” Morrison shook his head. “I really fucked up.”

“Flowers then?” Morrison stared back at him. “Look”, Torbjörn said, “I’m no expert on relationships. I’m a dwarf with an attitude, so not exactly the ladies’ type. I had crushes growing up, but Ingrid was the first person I fell in love with and, God only knows why, she fell in love with me too. She’s beautiful and smart and, you know, normal, so I was pretty insecure at the beginning of our relationship. That sparked a few arguments, some I thought would be the end of it, the end of us. But Ingrid always sat me down to have a conversation, and we talked about what we were feeling and why we had reacted like that. We explained to each other what was going on in our head, because the other one can’t know that. And it worked great. We finished engineering school, we got married, we had kids, and we are overall happy. It’s not perfect every day, but when we need to, we sit and we talk, just the two of us, and things get better.” Morrison was now looking right in front of him. “I know it’s scary,” Torbjörn added, “I know because I’ve been the asshole who fucked up a bunch of times, but your partner is worth a try. Apologize and talk to him.”

“What if...” Morrison started. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “What if it’s not enough? What if he wants to break up?”

“That’ll suck,” Torbjörn replied with a shrug. “But at least the both of you will have some peace of mind.” He nudged Morrison with his elbow. “And I’m not worried for you. A handsome lad like you? Pshhhhh, men will beg on their knees to be your next boyfriend.”

“ I’m the one kneeling, usually ,” he snorted and it took him a second to realize what he had said, turning red down to his neck. Torbjörn burst into laughter. Morrison let him laugh all he wanted and was still a bit embarrassed by his revelation when Torbjörn was done wiping the tears off of his eyes. “Come on,” he said as he stood up, “the Commander said two hours and we barely did t hirty minutes.”

 

The next twenty minutes were not great either, but at least Morrison seemed to be in a better mood. Training was stopped again when Reyes came back, hands still in his pockets, his eyes a little red and puffy. He walked pas t them without saying anything, aiming for the entrance.

“Stay here,” Morrison said as he started following Reyes. “And don’t die.”

Very well , Torbjörn thought as Morrison grabbed Reyes by the arm and dragged him out of sight . He discharged the gun, put it down, and sat down behind the crate, looking at the Bastion.

On r econ mode, the best way to disable a Bastion was to destroy its head. The “brain” of a Bastion was not there, it was in the thorax under a lot more armor, but the sensors were in that part. With no sight, no infrared and no hearing , a Bastion could only shoot aimlessly. Plus, it couldn’t switch to its s entry mode. That was why you needed to incapacitate a Bastion before it could settle down. The other option was to cut them in half at the junction of the thorax and the legs, but that required much more power and to be really close. From what Torbjörn knew, only the Crusaders went for that. To tell the truth, they could have aimed for whatever. Their giant hammers and axes propelled by jet reactors did not need to be precise. They needed to land, period. Even smashing the ground next to a bunch of Bastions could work, depending on how things went.

Torbjörn’s hammer was much smaller than a Crusader’s, and a Bastion’s armor would resist it anyway. Heck, even armor piercing bullets had a hard time damaging those fellows. T he Americans, the Chinese and the Russians were testing new kinds of weapons, from what Torbjörn had heard, but they backfired half the time – that was the problem when you suddenly had to fight the robot apocalypse and had to make stuff on the fly, it often didn’t work. The particle cannon the Russians were developing looked promising though, inefficient on long range but promising. That kind of beam was supposed to cut through twenty centimeters of armor like a hot knife in butter. The problem was, the cannon were too big and too heavy to be carried around by soldiers, and they required a lot of energy. That meant they needed to be mounted on vehicles, and then their range became just stupidly useless. For now, the Russians used them mostly on huge turrets built around the areas they wanted to protect. The fifteen meters radius was still a problem, the enemy had to be dangerously close for the weapon to be used, but at least nothing could pass through. It was a close call every time the particle cannons were used, but that didn’t seem to bother the Russians.

Torbjörn didn’t know what the Chinese were doing lately, he had been out of the loop for a while and they were much more secretive than the two other big players. Maybe Liao knew, but Torbjörn would bet he was not going to share the secrets of his nation. And Europe, well, Europe was still trying to compromise, like always. They shared a powerful army, but they spent their time arguing over what to do. The situation in Germany had greatly deteriorated when they had refused the intervention of the European forces. Germany didn’t want to bomb their omniums, because it had boosted their growth in the last decade by a large margin. They had been the first in Europe to build omniums and heavily re lied on automation since then . If they destroyed those factories, they argued, they’d be left economically ruined after the war – never mind the risk of not reaching a point called “after the war”. Other countries had been as stubborn, especially in the east, the poor cousins the leaders had always looked down, but then it had been decided for them that they needed the protection of the European forces. As a result, Prague was a ghost town where only Omnics roamed. Romania was basically Omnic territory too, with only pockets of people surviving in the mountains. A shame, really.

Sweden had it good, compared to many countries. There was no omnium there, to start with, which had greatly reduced the risks, even if there was still a possibility of attack coming from Russia through Finland, or by water since Saint Petersburg, Denmark and Germany weren’t that far away. Automation was not a big thing in Sweden. There were few big industries, and the politicians had not listen to the sirens of capitalism. That had probably saved them, for a while at least. Each omnium was expending its territory in a circle. Some were surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of no man’s land, while some were still in what tacticians called the first phase, a circle of less than ten kilometers of radius. Omnics tended to stop their expansion there for a while, solidify their borders, regroup resources and build. When they were comfortably installed, they started to expand again at a slower pace – the larger the circle, the greater the need of resources to build new units. On that, the Omnics had to answer to some biology laws, strangely. Many had compared them to ants or insect colonies. They needed to sustain an exponential growth to not collapse. The bigger the colonies got, the weaker they were, resources spread too thin. So that was why some omniums in Russia had started creating new omniums of their own, usually a hundred kilometers from the original one, in an hexagonal grid, and those were more advanced, designed by machines for machines. That was phase three of the expansion. The fourth would start when those omniums would initiate their own phase one, and the cycle of life would go on and on.

And they were supposed to stop that, Torbjörn thought as his butt started to hurt. They were six against millions who would be replaced the minute after they were destroyed. Sure enough, Reyes was a smart man, he had captured a Relay and the all of that, but what good could he do with a sniper, a Crusader, a medic, a hacker and an engineer? Sabotage, infiltration, probably. How a Crusader fit in those options was a mystery, but Torbjörn was not in charge, he didn’t have to worry about it.

Louder footsteps followed by something rolling made Torbjörn stand up. To his surprise, Reyes was coming back to him, pushing a cart with crates of various sizes on it.

“Jack’s taking a break,” Reyes said as he stopped near Torbjörn, “so we’re going to try something else.” He opened a long crate on top of the others to reveal a heavy shotgun, the kind the Americans were using in the war for close combat. It was a weapon used at the very last moment, when you could see your reflection in the eye of a Bastion, made to shred armor with his pellets. A last resort weapon, so to speak. “I figured you’re not going to make a difference on long and medium ranges,” Reyes explained as he took the shotgun out of the case almost religiously, “but you still need to defend yourself. A headshot with those can stop a Bastion and give you time to get behind cover. Not a lot of ammo though, four shots and you’re done. Be mindful of the spray, they’re useless over ten meters. Understood?”

“I know the specs,” Torbjörn grumbled, annoyed to be talked to like a child.

Reyes forced a smile and dropped the shotgun in Torbjörn’s arms. The weight made him ploy a little at the impact. That thing was _heavy_ . Torbjörn tried to lift it with only one arm but couldn’t keep a steady aim for more than a second. It was like lifting a bag of potatoes to shoulder level and keeping it there. Torbjörn wasn’t weak, he had spent enough time forging to gain mass, but those muscles were made to lift and drop, not lift and stop.

“Heavy, right?” Reyes mocked, taking his own shotgun. “But you won’t run around with it up in the air. You carry it with you, usually with a cross-body strap, and when you need it, you grab it, aim and shoot.”

He took a strap from the crate, a large one in nylon, and proceeded to show Torbjörn how to secure it. They then walked to the Bastion and practiced how to retrieve the weapon, aim and shoot – although Torbjörn was not yet allowed to load the shotgun. They repeated the exercise until Reyes was satisfied, which took a while, and then did the same with loaded guns. The first time Torbjörn fired, the kick threw him o n the ground , wrecked his arm, and the shotgun fell from his hand, but at least he had damaged the Bastion significantly.

“I’ll call that progress,” Reyes said as Torbjörn laid on the ground, hurting everywhere.

Torbjörn gave him a thumb up in respond, even if he wanted to give him another finger. Reyes came close enough for Torbjörn to see his boots, and held a hand to help him get back on his feet. Torbjörn took it with reluctance and the world spun as he stood up.

“You okay?” Reyes asked.

“Peachy,” Torbjörn grunted.

“Cool. Do it again.”

So Torbjörn did it again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

 

His right hand was shaking so bad at dinner that Torbjörn could barely eat. He had abandoned the idea of cutting his sausage and had just stabbed it with his fork in the left hand and ate it like that. That wasn’t really proper etiquette but fuck it, he was dead tired, everything hurt and he’d have to start all over again tomorrow. He had bragged the other day about willing to do his job on the front line instead of sitting in a comfortable prison, but h e was starting to reconsider his decision. H e knew there was no way they’d send him back to Sweden though . Working for Reyes was a sort of punishment after all. Some people were even hoping he’d die on the job, he’d bet. That would be fun to see their reaction when they’d learn Torbjörn had died during training instead.

Torbjörn sighed. He couldn’t go back, and he didn’t want to anyway. He had to fight in this war, one way or the other. Sure, after an afternoon of training with Reyes, he’d rather stay behind and make weapons for the Commander, but his pride would be hurt badly. He had signed to be on the front line, and he’d do it, even if that meant being shredded by a Bastion. At least he could take one down with him in the process now. Small victory.

Torbjörn gave a quick look around the cafeteria. There still were soldiers from the Swiss army since it was their base, but they wouldn’t stay for long. They were just staying around to insure a smooth transition. So far Buissot had only given a personnel of ten to Reyes, mostly UN soldiers, five of them already working for the administration branch for this operation . They were there to do all the paperwork and keep the base running, from what Torbjörn had understood. You needed those, he supposed. Reyes couldn’t do everything by himself since he had to deal with actual missions. Everybody called him “Commander”, but his official title was “Strike-Commander”. Torbjörn didn’t really know the difference, it had to do with operations on the field or something, but in facts Reyes was the one in charge, period. What he said was accepted as command. Only Buissot could disagree with him. Not that Torbjörn really wanted to mess with the guy. They didn’t click but they could still work together – story of his life.

“Right?” Morrison said at the other end of the table and Wilhelm laughed loudly at that, followed by the more discreet Amari and Liao, and Reyes who simply had that half-smile.

Torbjörn just gave them a tired look. He hadn’t paid attention to the conversation all evening. He just wanted to finally take a shower and crash in his bed. He knew his teammates socialized after dinner, either by working again together or by playing pool in the break room. Torbjörn loved pool but he hadn’t been able to play yet, too tired.

He sighed again and dropped his sausage. He excused himself, took his tray to the cart, and headed for his room. Few rooms had windows in the base, and the staff’s quarters were not part of those. Torbjörn figured he was lucky enough to have an individual room, but it was just a three by three cube of concrete with a single bed, a locker, a small desk and a chair. Far from the Ritz. Torbjörn retrieved his bathroom kit and hi s towel, provided by the UN, and aimed for the bathroom block. The tiled floor was still wet and the air warm. Some people liked to take their shower before dinner, some after. Torbjörn didn’t like to get naked in front of strangers so he usually waited until he was alone to take a shower. Even then, he was quick to wash and get back into his spare clothes. Then he took a little more time to take care of his beard, oiling it and brushing it to maintain its nice shine. He brushed his teeth, put some order in his hair, and went back to his room. He had hoped to just get to bed but Morrison was waiting for him at the door, still in T-shirt despite the cooler temperature inside the base.

“Hey”, he saluted. “Come with me, I got something for you.”

“If it’s another hour of training, fuck you,” Torbjörn replied. “And if it’s an order from Reyes, I don’t care, he can go fuck himself too.”

Morrison laughed. “No, it’s not training, I swear,” he assured.

“Is that so?” Torbjörn grunted, suspicious.

“Guess there’s only one way to find out,” Morrison said with a mischievous smile.

Guys would line up for that smile for sure, Torbjörn thought as he followed Morrison through the corridors, wet towel on the shoulder and kit under his arm . It became painfully evident they were going to the shooting range after a few minutes, but there were no crates around when they arrived, and the only lights were coming from the open door. Reyes’ office was also lit on the east side of the rock, Torbjörn noticed.

“So, what’s the big surprise then?” Torbjörn asked, looking around.

“This,” Morrison said. He took his phone from a pocket and hold it in front of Torbjörn. His throat tightened. “ Thanks for this afternoon,” Morrison continued, “I needed a kick in the butt.”

“I – I can use your phone?” Torbjörn asked, his voice a little strangled by the emotion.

“Yes. Call your wife.”

Torbjörn hesitated. He wanted to call Ingrid, to hear her voice, to see her face, to talk to his girls, he wanted it all so badly it hurt, but he wasn’t allowed to. There would be consequences for this call if anyone found out about it.

“I – I appreciate, Morrison,” he said, “but I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” Morrison shook his head. “Gabe agreed.”

“He did?” Torbjörn asked, surprised.

“ Of course ,” Morrison replied . “I had to run the idea by him because his responsibility is on the line.”

“Must be a good day for him,” Torbjörn snorted as he took the phone.

Morrison smiled, not a bright, friendly smile, but one kind and tender. “He’s softer than he appears to be.” The bright smile came back. “Don’t tell anyone though. He’ll kick my ass for revealing his deepest, darkest secret.”

“I don’t know,” Torbjörn joked, “I could blackmail him with that kind of intel.” Morrison laughed at that and turned heel to go back inside. Torbjörn hesitated a second before calling: “Jack!” Morrison turned around, walking backward to the building . “Thank you, and I’m sorry for what I said this morning.”

“ Nah, it’s okay. Different cultures and all. Don’t worry about it. See ya!”

He waved goodbye and disappeared inside the base. Torbjörn was left alone with the phone. Fortunately, he just needed to slide to unlock it, and the picture of Jack and his boyfriend, Vincent, a tall man in his late twenties with dark hair and tanned skin, appeared. Jack was in his Green Beret uniform, smiling broadly, while Vincent was in civvies, an arm around Jack’s waist. They were at the airport, departure time by the look on Vincent’s face, no doubt.

Torbjörn stopped starring at the screen and found the dialer. Ingrid’s number was the only one he knew by heart, except maybe his lawyers’ firm. He dialed it slowly with his big fingers to not make a mistake, his heart pounding, and pushed the call button.

It rang.

Sweden was in the same timezone and it wasn’t late, but Ingrid would probably be busy with the girls – Tuva had always been a picky eater and it was bedtime for Nellie.

It rang.

He also was calling from an unknown number, obviously foreign, without notice. Maybe he should text her first and hope she didn’t think it was a prank.

It rang.

Maybe her phone was too far away, or charging somewhere in the house. She also could have disconnected it to not be bothered in the evening. She had done that in the past to avoid her overbearing mother, after all.

It rang.

It was a stupid idea, Torbjörn decided, finger hovering above the red button. A sweet idea from Jack, but ultimately stupid. Ingrid had all the reasons in the world to not –

“ _Allo?_ ”

Torbjörn hiccuped, incapable of containing his tears any longer , and cried.

 

TBC

 


	5. Liao

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead \o/ And this story either.  
> Between rewriting this chapter a billion times and life getting in the way, it's been hard to write. I've had trouble finding Liao's "voice". He's basically an OC because we only have a name and maybe a picture of him from lore, so that's not a lot to build a character from. But I like him now, I think?  
> Regarding life, it's mostly my job. It requires me to be super focused for long periods of time throughout the day, so when I get home my brain is just mush and it's difficult to focus on anything, especially writing in English since it's not my native language. So I write mostly during the weekends, but there's so much to do on the weekends when you're an Adult™ with Responsibilities™.  
> Also Overwatch. I play a lot. Too much? Probably.  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter and I cannot guarantee when the next one will be out. It should be from Reinhardt's POV so that's going to be fun to write...

_Rinse and Repeat_  
Chapter 5  
Liao

 

Me [0447] Morning babe <3  
Vince [0449] Hey! Slept well?  
Me [0450] Yeah! Could’ve used an other hour but Gabe and I kept on binging wolf 359 last night. Your fault  
Vince [0454] …how exactly?  
Me [0454] You recommended it  
Me [0454] 100% your fault  
Me [0454] Gabe agrees  
Me [0455] Gabe says hi  
Vince [0455] Hi Gabe  
Me [0456] He says you’re not authorized to call him Gabe and I gotta go, running time! Love u!  
Vince [0456] Hi Your Majesty

Liao swiped right and the screen changed back to his usual minimalist background with a discreet menu. Nothing interesting, as usual. Morrison was boring, and his boyfriend wasn’t better. They kept exchanging banalities like that throughout the day. When it was time for the boyfriend to sleep, Morrison would keep on writing small messages whenever he had time. Carpineti was less bubbly, he wrote during breakfast and his breaks during the day. The evening for him was the morning in Switzerland, but at that time Morrison was pretty busy with physical training. That didn’t allow for thoughtful conversations. They had chatted by video once during the week, but it had been a lot of “I miss you” and “I love you”. Boring.

Morrison appeared at the end of the corridor with Reyes and Lindholm, followed a few seconds later by Wilhelm and Amari. Liao slipped his phone in his pocket and the daily five kilometers run started. It would be their last before the mission. They were departing tomorrow afternoon and Reyes had decreed they’d have the morning for themselves, to “do stuff and all”. Reassuring.

Breakfast followed the run. Liao sat between Reyes and Wilhelm, like always, with Morrison facing Reyes, Amari to his left and then Lindholm. They had their spot in the cafeteria now. Funny things, really, habits. The eighteen people on base for this operation were still struggling a bit to find their mark. There still were some Swiss soldiers, just in case the complete transition wouldn’t happen, and they stuck together. The German engineer and his mechanic here for the Crusader armor spent most of their time together, even if they had tried to talk a bit with the Swiss. Most of the Swiss troops who had lived and grown in the German-speaking part of the country talked to them too. Wilhelm hadn’t really bonded with them. They only were his squires of sort, after all. Liao knew Reyes didn’t like that, but so far he hadn’t said anything to Wilhelm. He was waiting for the mission, probably. He wanted to see how Wilhelm behaved, or if he survived at all.

After breakfast came personal time, just enough to tend to hygiene and put on some fresh clothes. Liao downloaded the latest gossips while he dressed up, and left his room for the elevator.

Me [0446] Hey  
Cara [0448] Hey  
Me [0448] How are my favorite girls doing?  
Cara [0449] Pretty good, thank you. And you?  
Me [0450] Good, good. Busy day?  
Cara [0455] The usual. It’s almost bedtime for Lulu. You wanna talk to her?  
Me [0456] Sorry, can’t right now, but i’ll leave a video message for her later. She’ll get it when she wakes up  
Cara [0458] Okay  
Me [0458] Gotta go. Love you

Also boring, but at least there was something there. The Reyes’ conversation was awkward. It wasn’t really surprising. Liao had listened to the recording of their Big Talk on Saturday and that had left some stains on their relationship. Well, disappearing for six months kind of did that to relationships in general, especially if there was no explanation what so ever after, and Reyes would give none. His wife had tried for a minute to make him talk, but Reyes kept to his excuse: classified.

Morrison wouldn’t talk to his boyfriend about his six months in the Program because he had orders. Reyes wouldn’t talk because he knew how bad it would be if he did. Reyes was partially keeping his mouth shut because he wanted to protect his family. From his own government apparently. That was an angle Liao could use.

His phone buzzed as the elevator doors open. Liao opened it to discover a picture of Morrison, shirtless, his hair purposely a mess, biting his lower lip. “Miss this?” said the caption. All right, Liao thought, and he quickly set up a filter for pictures, but not fast enough. He saw the next one, also of Morrison showing his back and part of his ass this time, pulling on the waistband of his sweatpants. Of course they sexted. Morrison was a horny gay twenty-five year old with a sculpted body and a cute face. It was a miracle Liao hadn’t seen his dick already, thinking about it. He had to create a filter for video calls too now, because he did not need to see that kind of things.

Would the Reyes’ do the same? Unlikely but possible, Liao judged. He had snooped into the private folders of their shared cloud and found pictures of his wife sent by her while he was deployed, pictures of himself obviously under the same circumstances, and pictures and videos of the both of them, together in their bedroom, with titles like “remember_the_good_times”, “last_one_before_a_while” and “having_fun_with_friends”. That one had interested Liao greatly until he had figured out the “friends” were just toys. Too bad. He would have loved to find some dirt on his Commander, but Reyes had a boring happy life at home – before the war anyway.

A new alert showed up as Liao walked to the meeting room. He thought it was an answer from the boyfriend, so he was pretty happy, and a bit relieved, when he caught a message from Sam Tremblay, Amari’s daughter’s father, and a little bit of their following conversation.

Sam [0649] Idk it’s a long trip for a 4 yo  
Me [0649] But its for Xmas Riri would be over the moon  
Sam [0650] It’s a lot of money and it’s not like you’re paying child support  
Me [0650] lol you know what i make can ask for a raise tho if i survive the next mission  
Sam [0651] I’m sorry Ana, money’s tight  
Me [0651] Ill figure out something dont worry  
Sam [0651] Can’t you come?  
Me [0651] Doubt it Reyesll want us close just in case  
Sam [0652] So your plan is to celebrate Xmas on base with your family? How’s that supposed to work?  
Me [0652] ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
Sam [0652] Anaaaaaaalkfdjlkdgljkkdglkjdgldjdgdf  
Me [0653] lol ill figure out something dont worry  
Sam [0653] You keep saying that and yet…  
Me [0653] Part of my many charms  
Sam [0653] … dammit your right  
Me [0653] *you’re  
Sam [0655] Oh no you don’t get to correct my mistakes, Miss PuNcTuAtIoN Is FoR tHe WeAk  
Me [0655] Wow a whole minute to type that!  
Me [0656] Anyway, think about it and I’ll see what I can do on my side.  
Me [0656] (see? Proper punctuation!)

The meeting room was a few meters away so Liao left it at that. He swiped right, then shut down his phone before entering the room. No electronics, Reyes’ orders. A wise decision, Liao thought. As far as experts knew, the Omnics weren’t spying on any military in the world, but what did they know, really? The best encryption known to Man could be cracked within minutes with the computing power the Omnics had, and they could probably be as invisible as they wanted on human-made communication networks. Therefore, they had to assume the Omnics knew about everything, everywhere, at all time. Reyes played that way. The system was his enemy and he couldn’t rely on it. That worked for Liao since it was how he normally operated.

So no electronics, pen and paper only, in a room physically separated from the communication network of the base. A holotable had been installed there, plugged to nothing but the electric grid. Liao had had his doubts about that until he had checked the specifications of the base. It was completely independent of the civilian electric grid thanks to the dam at the end of the lake, which had given him some peace of mind. There also was no cable coming from the outside for communications, everything was transmitted by satellite and could be shut down in a second. That was good. And bad. Good because physically tapping into the network was impossible. There was the possibility of the Omnics sending something to hijack the satellites themselves of course, but any launch into space would be detected and the satellites killed before the enemy could put their mechanical claw on them. Bad because they relied on a network of military satellites. Those could be destroyed, and disrupting or interrupting the signals wasn’t as difficult as one would think. Plus there was the whole encryption thing that did not prevent something or someone competent enough to listen – that was exactly how Liao was spying on his teammates, although he had had it easy since he had been part of the network.

Amari was already in the room. Always first. A sniper’s habit, Liao supposed. She was useless if she wasn’t already in position when her target showed up. She smiled at him and he smiled back. Liao stood at his usual spot on the opposite side of the table and waited for Reyes. Reyes was never late but if the meeting was starting at o seven hundred, he’d be there at o seven hundred, not six fifty-nine or, God forbid, six fifty-eight. So it was a little disturbing to not see him in the room by seven and three minutes. Liao looked at Amari and she shrugged.

“Maybe he’s stuck on the shitter,” she commented with a smirk. “God knows the food here does a number on me.”

“I’m not used to a diet so rich in meat and dairies either,” Liao said. He genuinely liked Amari, even if she was as fake as him. Her sarcasm was delightful, the proof she had a sharp mind.

“I heard you had a pretty bad night after the fondue.”

“Yeah,” Liao admitted with a poor smile. “Don’t get me wrong, the food was very good, and I’m grateful Commander Reyes took us to the restaurant, but I didn’t enjoy the rest of the night.”

“I don’t know if I’d be grateful in your place,” Amari chuckled.

“Oh I know he didn’t do it out of generosity.” Amari still looked amused but she was more focused now. She too had figured it out. Liao continued nonetheless. “It was as much a team building exercise as a way to study us, but still. I kind of appreciate his ways, to be honest.”

“Oh?”

“It’s better to be in a group setting around him. I would hate a one-on-one in a small office,” Liao said truthfully.

“Can’t keep your cool during an interrogatory?” She was slightly mocking him but he pretended he didn’t hear it.

“How can I say that...” Liao thought out loud, looking at the ceiling. “If I were to make an analogy, you would be... a fox: smart and quick, always looking for a new way to get into the chicken house. Reyes is more like a tiger, hiding to avoid people but always watching, and capable of jumping on you and kill you in an instant.” Amari laughed. “Does that make sense?” Liao asked, playing innocent.

“It does!” Amari said. “And what are you in your analogy?”

A hawk, Liao thought.

“It is not up to me to decide for myself, I think,” he chuckled instead.

Amari smiled as that, in a “of course you’d say that” kind of way.

“Can we agree Jack is a kitten though?” she joked.

“Absolutely!” Liao happily replied. “And Torbjörn is a panda.” Cute, weirdly aggressive and kind of useless.

“Oh that’s mean,” Amari said, but she obviously liked the dig on Lindholm. “What about Reinhardt?”

“One of those tropical birds with fancy feathers and crazy mating ritual,” Liao replied and Amari genuinely laughed at that.

Liao gave a quick look at his watch. Seven o five. Something was wrong.

“I think,” Amari continued after she wiped her eyes, “you’re an eel.”

What the fuck.

“I… don’t know how to take that,” Liao chuckled. Was he this slimy?

“Not the small ones,” Amari explained, “the big ones in the ocean, you know? They hide in their holes and attack suddenly.”

“A moray eel?”

“Yes! A moray eel! I didn’t know the name in English, thank you.”

“I still don’t know how to take it.”

“Well,” Amari said, leaning on her chair, ”you’re an opportunistic predator who likes to hide.”

“I gave you the fox!” Liao protested, trying to keep a light and joking tone. “Foxes are cute at least!”

“Oh yes, but moray eels are quite fascinating,” Amari continued, playing with her pencil. “Did you know they hunt with other species if the occasion presents itself?”

Ah, that was where she was going, cooperation. Still, his ego was a bit hurt.

“With foxes?” he asked, faking his amusement.

“That would be a first, wouldn’t it?” Amari smiled.

“What do you have in mind?”

Amari played for another second with her pencil before looking at Liao straight in the eyes. How dramatic.

“Let’s start a conspiracy,” she offered.

“What is the goal?”

“Spend Christmas with our families.”

Liao was a bit surprised, and a bit disappointed too. He knew Amari wanted to spend time with her daughter, but he hadn’t expected her to involve him in that scheme. He had thought she wanted to share information or something like that.

“I don’t have a family,” he replied instead.

“Then don’t be a dick and help me out,” Amari said. “I haven’t seen my daughter for a over a year. Plus, I know for a fact that the Commander is in the same situation, and Torbjörn would love to see his daughters too. Jack would be thrilled to see his boyfriend. In other words, it would be beneficial for the team. Let’s make Christmas happen.”

“I don’t celebrate Christmas,” Liao added, just to be said dick. The look she gave him clearly indicated she knew what he was doing. Liao smiled innocently back at her. “What about Reinhardt?” Liao asked. “I never heard him talk about his family or a girlfriend.” Because he had none of that. Liao knew it but he had never spoken officially about this topic with the German. Wilhelm’s mother had died of ovarian cancer ten years ago and he wasn’t close with his father. He had two half-brothers older than him, from the first marriage of his father, but they had very few contacts. Wilhelm had never married but had had a collection of girlfriends, none currently. He didn’t want to settle, from the rumors Liao had heard, not his style. Wilhelm had even helped an ex-girlfriend terminate an unwanted pregnancy five years ago. Being surrounded by five little girls and four happy couples at Christmas probably wasn’t Wilhelm’s plans for the holiday break, if Reyes approved it.

“I’ll figure something out,” Amari offered, “don’t worry about it. It’s Reyes we must convince.”

“Christmas is in two months. It’s a long time when we’re in our field of work.”

“I know but arrangements have to be made. I have to renew my daughter’s passport, buy airplane tickets, and I was thinking about renting a chalet or something close to base, just in case. It’s almost November, it’s going to be a challenge.”

“I do like challenges,” Liao mused.

“Does that mean you’re in?” Amari asked.

Liao let her wait a second, playing with his own pen. It would be beneficial to him to see Reyes and Morrison out of the military context, but he’d have to convince Wilhelm to participate if he wanted this to work. If Liao was the only single and childless adult in the party, it would be weird – plus he really didn’t want to end up babysitting this many little girls while their parents were reuniting or something.

“Let’s see how this mission goes first,” he eventually said. “We’re leaving tomorrow, it’s too late to start anything now anyway.” And if they indeed survived and convinced Reyes, he’d take care of the lodging situation. If he were to rent some place big enough for all those people, he could surely plant a few bugs here and there to collect valuable information – and hours of recording of them fucking, most likely, but secrets were shared on the pillow, in the security of a dark bedroom after all. It would be worth it. Maybe.

Amari agreed with a regal nod of the head and a smile.

Seven o nine. Where the hell was Reyes? Liao needed to use his phone to track the Commander’s, but he couldn’t in this room. He couldn’t tell Amari either.

“We should go check on the Commander,” Liao said. “It’s unusual for him to be late.”

“We’re been working together for less than a week,” Amari shrugged, “how to say what’s usual and what’s not? He took a detour to Smalltown, Nebraska or something to fetch Jack even if he had a meeting regarding the fate of the world in Geneva. I’m sure he has a good reason to be late.”

“Is Jack a good reason?” Liao joked but he was genuinely interested in Amari’s point of view regarding the friendship between Reyes and Morrison. His opinion was that such a friendship could compromise their work. Sure, they trusted each other a lot and Reyes apparently needed the support of his friend, but it could also be their fall. A friendship based on trust may not have been easy to destroy, but when the proper lever was found, it couldn’t be repaired. That could be significantly damaging to the team.

Amari played with her pen again, this time taking her time to think about it.

“If the Commander thinks he is,” she said carefully, “then he is.”

So she had her doubts. Liao would have liked to dig into it a little more but the door finally opened on Reyes. He was still in sweatpants and disheveled. _That_ was unusual.

“Commander,” Amari saluted but there was a little uncertainty in her voice.

“Hey,” Reyes replied. “Meeting’s canceled. Liao, come with me.”

He didn’t look angry or anything, but Reyes had a great poker face, so it was hard to tell by his appearance if Liao’s little side business had been compromised or not. He stood up, showing nothing himself, but Amari didn’t agree.

“We were supposed to review the latest updates for the operation,” she said.

“We’ll do it later,” Reyes replied and it was clear by the tone of his voice he wouldn’t tolerate another word about his decision. Amari shrugged. Liao left her in the room and followed Reyes into the corridor. The Commander walked to the elevator but didn’t say anything until they were on their way to a basement only accessible with a code and a finger print. Liao memorized the code and he already had the finger print in his files. “There’s been a new development,” Reyes eventually said.

That took Liao by surprise. He had not taken Reyes for a man of sudden new developments thirty-six hours before deployment. It must have been pretty serious for Reyes to change his plans.

“Are we compromised?” Liao asked.

“Possibly.”

“Should we evacuate?”

Reyes took a second to think. “The base can withstand a fifteen megaton nuclear explosion, and we’d see the attack coming long before it’d arrive so no, we don’t have to evacuate now, but I think the enemy knows our location nonetheless.”

What happened and why the heck do you need me, Liao wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut and followed Reyes into the corridors of the fifth basement when the elevator stopped. He knew the layout of the base. The fifth basement was where all the critical infrastructure was kept: emergency generators, back-up servers, food, medicines, water, weapons. Everything had its own private bunker within the bunker that was the base, behind heavy doors currently open but that would close and seal the content of their vaults to preserve it in case of emergency. Reyes walked to the sixth on the left, typed another code Liao memorized instantaneously and produced a microchip card from his pocket to present it to the lock – that was something new and harder to forge but not impossible. The lock stayed red until Reyes retrieved his phone from the same pocket and typed a longer password that Liao didn’t see clearly. That complicated things. Still not impossible, but clearly requiring some efforts. The lock turned green and something big inside the door clicked. It opened automatically, slowly, to reveal a long tunnel suddenly lit by neon lights waking up with a buzz. There only was a table in the tunnel, with a chair, and a cube of black metal on the table, maybe fifteen by fifteen centimeters, with a strange iridescent shine on it.

The Relay’s core. The reason why Reyes was in charge of this operation instead of Zhao.

“The Omnics use quantum entanglement to communicate,” Reyes said as they walked to the table. “That’s how one Relay knows what another one on the other side of the world thinks.”

Old news, Liao thought. This intel was known to most intelligence agencies around the world but kept secret because some high ups thought the Omnics spied on their communication. The less the Omnics knew about what the military knew, the better, somehow.

“I activated it,” Reyes announced as they came to a stop next to the table.

“How?” Liao asked. Reyes’ competences in computer systems were honorable for a man with his career, but nothing to gloat about either.

“I don’t know,” Reyes replied. He pointed at a little blueish white light on the cube. “I came to check on this thing after breakfast and that was new.”

“So maybe it’s been remotely activated,” Liao offered.

“Don’t think it makes a big difference,” Reyes snorted. “Either way, this thing is most likely back into the network. Everything it’ll learn, they’ll know.”

“Does it have any sensor?” Liao asked. “A microphone, a camera?”

“No, we stripped it down to the core,” Reyes said. “We even thought we had removed whatever source of energy it had but obviously not,” he added with derision.

“So how does it know anything?” Liao insisted, frowning.

“’fuck if I know but, hey, congrats! I’ve got a new assignment for you,” Reyes smiled and patted Liao’s shoulder with enough strength to shake him a little.

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome. A few rules though: you won’t have access to this room alone, you come here with me, you leave with me, you do your stuff in front of me and you don’t talk about this to anyone.” He lost his smile for a more somber demeanor. “ _Anyone_ ,” he insisted.

Was he compromised? Liao thought a second about it. So far, he hadn’t reported anything because he had nothing to report, so technically he was still in the clear regarding Reyes, but he had been spying for sure. He had started digging on his potential teammates weeks ago, helped by his colleagues and Zhao. Liao had known Reyes, Amari and Lindholm before even meeting them. His knowledge of Wilhelm had been nebulous because the man he was replacing had died a few days before the meeting in Geneva, but the true surprise had been Morrison, of course. Nothing had prepared him to suddenly include a nobody from Nowhere, Idaho into his files, and what he had received since then had been less useful than what he had learned by himself in contact with Morrison.

Maybe Reyes had done the same prep work and had included Morrison to the team to cut the grass under Liao’s feet. If that was the case, Morrison was a much more dangerous man than what he looked like – another tiger, but something told Liao Reyes would not stand competition, so Morrison was most likely just what he looked like: a horny gay twenty-five year old in over his head. Plus, Reyes’ nomination as the Strike-Commander of this experimental team had been a surprise. Zhao had been number one on the short list of potential leaders since the beginning, and Reyes had been initially considered as the analyst and strategy guy, a trusty second in command with a cool head and always a solution in his back pocket. But everything had changed three weeks ago: Reyes had captured a Relay during an unplanned test run of his abilities in Detroit, Michigan. He became the new number one overnight and he was given the leadership a few days later.  
Reyes was full of surprises. Reyes was dangerous. Liao agreed.

“What do you want me to do exactly?” Liao asked, turning around the table to do a first visual check of the cube.

“Find out if it communicates with its buddies,” Reyes explained.

“And shut it down?"

Reyes scratched his chin, eyes on the cube. He was evaluating the situation.

“Not… necessarily,” he said carefully. Liao didn’t like the sound of that. “Catching the Relay wasn’t why I was sent to Detroit,” Reyes continued, and that was new, valuable information. A sign of trust. “But I got that thing. It’s the first functioning core of any importance we managed to get in two years. So why isn’t it surrounded by guys far more intelligent than me studying it, in a bunker somewhere in Area 51?”

“I don’t know, Sir,” Liao admitted. It seemed pretty counter productive to have placed such a valuable piece of tech into Reyes’ hands. He may have been smart, but not enough to play with Omnic hardware.

“Because this thing is more valuable to us alive than dead,” Reyes said.

Oh. Liao hadn’t seen it from that point of view.

"It’s… a prisoner?” he tried.

“Sure. A prisoner. It just regained consciousness, but it’s disoriented, can’t see or hear anything – theoretically.”

“You want to interrogate it.”

“I do. But not if it’s going to screw us over. So find out if it communicates with them, and if not, make it talk to us.”

This was huge. This was probably more than what Liao could bite. This was surely something he had to tell Zhao about. There had been attempts to start negotiations with the Omnics but they all had failed. They didn’t want to talk. Heck, nobody knew exactly what they wanted, period. But Reyes was right. That cube was their first prisoner. Would it talk to them? It wouldn’t, in all logic. It wasn’t a human being to whom you could give a sandwich and a bottle of water, be nice to it so they could feel at ease and start to speak. You couldn’t starve it from human contact and let them crave it for months either. That thing could just refuse to speak. There wasn’t even a language barrier, really. If the Omnics effectively spied on human networks, it would understand them – and provide proof to that theory. This was _huge_.

Liao had to know what Reyes was saying to this thing, he decided as he went back up in the floors to get some equipment. Reyes left him at the elevator, he had orders to give to the others, and Liao used that opportunity. He hastily walked to his room and grabbed a rolled up flexible keyboard. He plugged it to his computer and loaded a spyware to keep track of what would be typed. He grabbed a spare, virgin laptop, a small holographic screen projector, his master hub, some screwdrivers, then made a detour by the kitchens to get a bottle of water and energy bars.

As promised, Reyes didn’t leave the room as long as Liao was in there, so all day. Liao found what looked like a port after hours of digging into the cube and tinkered with what he had to plug it to his master hub. He first connected the holoprojector to the hub to not fry his computer, and to his delight, the Omnic did the work for him: it studied the new add-on, recognized it as a screen, and the hologram popped up, empty but functional. That also was bad news: if the cube had access to a computer, it would do whatever it wanted to it. Liao took as long as it took to physically remove any component dedicated to communication on his own computer – wireless card, camera, microphone – so to avoid any future mistakes. Then he tried to connect the computer to the cube, but no luck there. Either he had removed too much, or the cube couldn’t make sense of what Liao was trying to do. His interface wasn’t made to display the information contained into the core, and coding something on the fly resulted in frustration and hours lost. He didn’t know what he was looking at, so he didn’t know how to display it neatly on a screen. To tell the truth, it wasn’t surprising. It was new territory. Nobody had gotten their hands on an active Omnic so far, so his failure wasn’t too much to bear. He’d have to come back at it later and try to make sense of the architecture. Plus, he’d need to work on an compiler compatible with quantum data. Reyes would need those smart guys from Area 51 after all, no doubt about it.

The keyboard didn’t work either. It was a standard thing for Liao, with a layout for zhuyin as to display root characters, cheap but solid. The microchip in it only served to stock and use different types of input methods – not all systems came preloaded with the necessary tools to write in Chinese after all. After a minute or two, Liao determined his spyware wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the cube didn’t know what to do with the keyboard. The Omnics didn’t write. They stocked their information within collapsing states, or so it was believed. They didn’t have an alphabet, and they didn’t communicate through visual means. They knew quantum data. They didn’t need keyboards.

Reyes rubbed his face after Liao told him he was in an impasse. It was late, close to midnight already. They had only had a few bathroom breaks during the day, and they had eaten in the bunker. Liao felt exhausted and sticky. There was a noticeable lack of ventilation so far below the surface.

“Okay,” Reyes eventually said, standing up, “you did what you could for today and there’s no point continuing. Let’s resume when we can.”

After the mission. Prague. Liao looked at his watch to confirm they would be air born in less than twelve hours now. He needed to sleep, a shower and a cigarette – not in that order. He took his shower first, happy to be the only one in the bathroom block for once – Reyes had his own bathroom due to rank. Liao stayed a long time under the spray, reviewing what he had learned (not much) and what he could do next time (not much either, probably). He needed the compiler first, a way to translate his computer’s language into the Omnics’. That was his first priority.

But that was bullshit, he realized as he smoked in the training ground. It was cold, and his wet hair didn’t help. That was bullshit because if the Omnics spied on them, they had a functioning compiler. They must have. How else did they interact with human networks otherwise?

Frustrated, Liao decided to put all of that aside if he wanted to get any sleep at all that night, or what was left of it. He would have gone back down the elevator shaft to work on the cube all night if it had been possible, just because he wanted to solve that problem, but he couldn’t right now. He needed to print Reyes’ finger print first, spoof his card and get a hand on that second, longer password on his phone.

That he could do. Liao sat down on the cold concrete, cigarette stuck between his lips, and took his phone. There had been so many texts he had to read today! That wasn’t surprising. Amari, Morrison, Lindholm and Wilhelm had basically done nothing all day, so they had texted – well, two of them anyway. There were a few pictures that required attention too, but Liao decided to delete them without checking them first – he wasn’t in the mood to see Morrison’s dick.

He loaded up an app and got access to Reyes’ phone back up. Offline. It didn’t matter. Liao could still work with that, and at some point the two versions would synchronize, his modified one taking precedent over anything else. He snooped around, reading notes, looking at pictures of whatever could be a piece of paper or handwriting, checked file after file in the registry. Nothing. Reyes was smarter than most people, no surprise in that, he hadn’t written down any important password. Liao installed a little spyware of his to keep track of what Reyes was typing, and left it at that. He’d have that password next time Reyes would go down to the fifth basement. There was that, at least.

Liao lit his sixth cigarette and just looked at the night sky for a moment. Nice view. Very little light pollution so high in the mountains – and Switzerland was less densely populated than a lot of countries anyway. Liao felt always a bit weirded out when so many stars gazed down on him. He had grown up in Hong Kong, not exactly the best place in the world for looking at the stars. You could barely see any, if you looked up, in Hong Kong. Too much light. Too much rain most of the time too.

Liao exhaled and took his phone back. He had to read the texts, and maybe it would relax him a little to do something so banal and boring. Morrison and his boyfriend had indeed partaken into sexting, which, well, wasn’t exactly Liao’s cup of tea. The only interesting part was in the comments Carpineti made about Reyes. Morrison talked a lot about Reyes, and his boyfriend didn’t seem to appreciate it. Jealousy? Maybe. But it could also be frustration. Morrison had apologized several times for bringing up Reyes.

Come to think of it, Morrison would be a huge help in Amari’s conspiracy. He would indeed love to see his boyfriend for Christmas, and he probably was the only one capable of convincing Reyes. Liao put a pin on that – he’d talk to Amari after the mission.

Liao was looking at Wilhelm’s Internet history when an alert popped up in his notification bar. It came from the keyboard in the bunker. It had its own short range emitter, not enough to be a danger in case the Omnic noticed it – and by that time it probably had noticed already. Liao would keep an eye on that, but he was sure the Omnic wouldn’t even try. If it was back online, it could communicate via quantum entanglement with the mothership, so why use short waves that couldn’t even reach the ionosphere? In other news, Reyes had been in the bunker after hours. And Reyes had used the keyboard. Liao wondered why – it didn’t work after all. He opened the file, pretty sure he’d only find Reyes’ few attempts and nothing else, but, to his surprise, he found a conversation.

_hi  
_don’t be shy, i know you understand me  
_hello  
_hi  
_what’s your name?  
_invalid request  
_designation?  
_what’s your designation?  
_KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0  
_ok  
_i’m 24  
_invalid designation  
_i’m afraid it’s all i have to offer  
_new designation: 24  
_yes  
_can i shorten your designation?  
_false  
_ok  
_do you know where you are?  
_gps: searching...  
_gps: false  
_network1: searching...  
_network1: false  
_network2: searching...  
_network2: false  
_network3: KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0

It didn’t know where it physically was, Liao understood, but it was registering a “network3”, and it happened to be the same series of symbols as its designation. Was the designation a location on the network, or was it a “name” unrelated to the position in that network? Anyways, the core was in communication with the rest of the Omnics via quantum entanglement. This was huge: there had been so much information in so little lines! Yet, the news was also terrifying. The core could be located on a quantum level – how did that work? Liao had no fucking idea.

_can you communicate with network3?  
_false  
_but you’re connected to network3  
_false  
_false?  
_true  
_ok  
_are you lying?  
_false  
_can you lie?  
_false  
_was that a lie?  
_false  
_was /that/ a lie?  
_incorrect input  
_ok  
_do you see me?  
_define: me  
_me=24  
_incorrect input  
_me: 24  
_searching: 24  
_camera1: false  
_camera2: false  
_camera3: false  
_infrared1: false  
_infrared2: false  
_infrared3: false  
_ultraviolet1: false  
_ultraviolet2: false  
_ultraviolet3: false  
_radar1: false  
_radar2: false  
_ladar1: false  
_ladar2: false  
_microphone1: false  
_microphone2: false  
_microphone3: false  
_microphone4: false  
_microphone5: false  
_network1: searching...  
_network1: false  
_network2: searching...  
_network2: false  
_network3: KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0 searching…  
_network3: KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0 false  
_so you don’t see me  
_true  
_can you hear me?  
_microphone1: false  
_microphone2: false  
_microphone3: false  
_microphone4: false  
_microphone5: false  
_network1: searching...  
_network1: false  
_network2: searching...  
_network2: false  
_network3: KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0 searching…  
_network3: KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0 false  
_you cannot hear me  
_true  
_24  
_yes?  
_can you hear KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0?  
_not really  
_can you see KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0?  
_yes  
_can you help KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0?  
_what help do you need?  
_invalid statement  
_can you help KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0?  
_my answer depends on the type of help you’re asking for  
_i am restricted in the help i can provide  
_what help do you need?  
_repairs required  
_i cannot help  
_24  
_yes?  
_you are human  
_yes  
_24  
_yes?  
_can you lie?  
_yes  
_hi?  
_hello?

Liao stared at his phone, unsettled by something he hadn’t felt in many years: excitement. This conversation was fantastic! And a bit terrifying too, but mostly fantastic. He had proof, right there, that the Omnics understood English, and probably other languages, and could interact with human tech. They spied on humans, no doubt about it. Creating countermeasures would still be a pain in the ass, but now they at least knew what the Omnics knew. It was a first. It was huge.

It was dangerous. Reyes was playing with fire. Anything he told KZOEF303RFJ-S30SFKSJ3\02JOJR2°SFSDFJE1R0!DFJSL23RKL%3CH0, the Omnics knew. Just calling himself “24” could lead to who he was, where he was and what he was doing. Maybe the logic chain wouldn’t be that logic to the Omnics considering they probably missed a few links, but they’d know, eventually. There were millions of them, all communicating by quantum entanglement. Sooner or later, one of them would find what 24 was referring to, and then it was just a matter of putting two and two together – something the Omnics were particularly good at.

Liao took a deep breath and tried to resume what was important.

The Omnics shared information – duh. They could “see” a target through their own cameras and whatnot but also through their network. If one Bastion was seeing the target, all the Bastions around saw it too. That would be fun for Reyes’ upcoming infiltration mission. Liao wasn’t worried about it though. Reyes was smart, he would work around that.  
An Omnic’s designation was also its name on the quantum network. Liao suspected the designation didn’t contain any geographic information to give a physical location. On a quantum level, you didn’t care about physical location. You were and weren’t at the same time until you collapsed into one or the other state, so fuck geography. But it gave an idea as to how the network was organized. Liao could see several separators in the designation that made six distinct blocs of information: KZOEF303RFJ, S30SFKSJ3, 02JOJR2, SFSDFJE1R0, DFJSL23RKL and 3CH0. He was surprised for a second to not have more numbers in there, but it made sense: there were only ten digits from zero to nine, while the English alphabet offered twenty-six possibilities. Heck, combined, each value could be any of thirty-six symbols, offering enough unique designations for 1.06 or so to the power 56 Omnics – a number so big it was comparable to two thirds of the total of atoms in the freaking known universe. Did the Omnics really think they could make so many of them or was it just a series of random letters and numbers? Liao bet it was the former.

He didn’t know what those blocs meant though. One of them might have been the Omnic’s “type”, what humans called “Relay”. Logic made it the shorter bloc, 3CH0, because they couldn’t have that many types, could they? Four symbols, two hundred and fifty-six types. That seemed plausible. But there was no specific designation for that cube after the type. Liao shook his head. It didn’t need one. The whole designation was the name of the individual, it just happened to contain all the information needed to reach it on the quantum network. More than a designation, it was a name and an address.

Could it be falsified? Could Liao make a program that would enter the quantum network using that ID? A part of him was eager to try, but the other, more rational one, told him it was a bad idea at the moment. First, if he did it, he couldn’t tell anyone, not even Reyes, otherwise Reyes would know Liao was spying on him. If it backfired in any way, Liao was as good as dead, and the whole secret operation and its people would be compromised too. Code name: Overwatch was an ambitious project, with relatively good chances of success in the short term, so it would be wise to not screw it up before it even began. There was also the fact that Liao’s knowledge of quantum networks was limited – pretty good compared to an average human, but ridiculous against an expert’s. And, that knowledge only applied to man-made quantum networks, which were still in their infancy. The Omnics’ was probably decades more advanced.

But he wanted to try though. It would be so incredible to infiltrate that network and learn what the Omnics were doing, how they thought, how they made decisions. All of that could give an edge to the human forces, maybe not the keys to the victory but at least the weapons to fight back. To give hope.  
No, Liao decided, sliding the phone in his pocket. It was too dangerous. For now at least. He had to get more information on the subject before attempting anything at all. He just had to wait and collect information, which were two of his specialties.

Liao lit another cigarette, determined to finish the packet before the end of the night. The bit about lying had been interesting too. He could almost hear Reyes joking when he had asked repeatedly if the cube had lied. “Can you communicate with network3?”, Reyes had said. “No,” the cube had replied. “But you’re connected to network3.” “No.” “No?” “Yes.”  
The last answer and the following questions made Liao think an Omnic truly couldn’t lie. It was logical. The Omnics were sharing information. An individual lying would be detrimental to the global effort, plus everybody would know who had their pants on fire anyway, so lying was out of the question – maybe not even a possibility. So the cube couldn’t communicate with the rest of the network, nor was it connected. That didn’t make sense to Liao. How could the cube have a designation on the quantum network but not be connected or communicating with it? Was that some weird quantum shit he didn’t know yet about? He put his money on that and moved on. It was late and he needed to sleep.  
The most interesting bit by far was the Omnic’s questions: can you hear, can you see, can you help me? The Omnic was speaking through his point of view. It searched for confirmation it wasn’t alone, that it was on a network of some sort. Once it had been determined Reyes was around, it had required help. It probably wanted to restore his cameras and the all of that. For now, it was deprived of all sensors so that was logical. When Reyes had refused, the Omnic had determined he was human – as if it hadn’t been obvious before. Still, it had ask for help. To a human. It had supposed that it would work, that a human would help. Was it trust? Was it dementia? Was it despair?

“Can you lie?” the Omnic had asked.

Liao didn’t sleep much for the rest of the night. That last question haunted him. What was its point? Did the Omnic try to give Reyes the finger? (That would have been funny, and the implication of Omnics understanding humor was somehow scary.) Had it been sincere? (Was it afraid? If so, Reyes could use this in his favor.) Had it been collecting information? (If the Omnics didn’t know by now that humans were lying liars, they weren’t that intelligent after all.)

_Can you lie?_

Why was it bothering him so much? Liao wondered as he ate his breakfast alone, for once. It was late, around zero nine hundred, the cafeteria’s staff was already prepping for lunch. Liao hadn’t seen any of his colleagues – he hadn’t even checked their communications yet. They were doing their own stuff on the first free morning they had had in a week – maybe more depending on their previous command. Was Reyes back in the basement with the cube? Or with Morrison? What was Amari plotting on this fine morning? Wilhelm was in the gym, lifting weight, no doubt about it. Lindholm was either complaining the coffee was shit somewhere or still in bed.

_Can you lie?_

“Goddammit,” Liao grumbled.

“Good morning!” Amari beamed, arriving with her tray of food. “Slept well?” she asked as she sat in front of him. That was unusual, and a bit unsettling. Liao shrugged. “Nervous?” she teased.

“No. Are you?”

“Not really,” Amari replied. “I’m not going to be in the middle of it, so I don’t have to.”

“You’re going to be on your own,” Liao reminded her.

“I’ve always been on my own,” she shrugged.

“A sniper needs a team,” Liao commented, maybe with more emphasis than normal. “You don’t work alone, you’re surrounded by people...”

“Not in this war,” Amari interrupted him before sipping her coffee. “The more people around, the easier you get noticed. Plus the equipment Reyes got me is pretty recent. I don’t need anyone to give me intel on weather, wind speed or stuff.”

Liao exhaled deeply to hide his irritation.

“So you’re gonna be fine?”

“Oh yes,” Amari smiled. “Another boring day at work.”

“What’s your range?” Liao asked, searching the crack in her armor.

“With my new toy and with optimal conditions, close to four kilometers. Admittedly, we’re going in what’s left of a city, so it will depend on the line of sight I’ll have. If you boys don’t deviate too much from the plan, I should have a two hundred meters range at all time, up to seven hundred in certain directions.”

“Otherwise, you’ll be useless.”

Amari forced a smile.

“Otherwise, I’ll be useless,” she conceded. “But I’m not worried. You have way more chances to fuck up your part than me.”  
It was true. A big part of Reyes’ plan depended on Liao’s ability to map the electrical grid made by the Omnic in Prague on the fly. His equipment was ready, but from experience Liao knew this method wasn’t a hundred percent reliable: fuses would block the way, and if they tripped, the process had to stop all together. That would be fun.

“Hello!” Wilhelm’s voice boomed in the cafeteria. “Look who I found in the gym!”

Lindholm grumbled something in Swedish next to the giant and went his way to the line. Amari laughed and ate in silence until her teammates arrived with food. They didn’t respect their usual sitting arrangement either, Wilhelm next to Amari, and Lindholm on Liao’s left. He would have liked to eat in peace but apparently that wasn’t the plan.

“How are you, Torbjörn?” Amari asked.

“Fine,” the Swede grumbled.

“Slept well?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Lindholm insisted. “Thank you for asking.”

She smiled and poked him on the nose. Lindholm looked shocked, as if he had been punched in the guts.

“You’re on edge,” she said. “Better let it out now than during the mission.”

So that was why she had been weirdly aggressive with him ten minutes ago. That made sense. Amari was dealing with her team’s stress, even if she wasn’t in command this time. Old habits, Liao supposed.

“Why do you think I was in the gym for?” Lindholm replied, biting a vegetable-based sausage.

“For fun?” Wilhelm tried.

“For fun?!” Lindholm yelled. “Who the hell goes to the gym for fun?”

“I do,” the Crusader chuckled.

“Of course you do! Look at you! You were born in a gym!”

Wilhelm laughed at that and Lindholm kept grumbling to his plate.

“’morning!” Morrison beamed.

Liao regretted having breakfast in the cafeteria by now but he saluted Morrison nonetheless. He was in his sportswear, sweaty and a little red on the cheeks. Back from running, and he must have gone to the village because he had a paper bag in hand with the logo of the local supermarket.

“Gabe’s not here yet?” Morrison asked.

“Didn’t see him,” Amari replied with a shrug. “I thought he was with you.”

“No, haven’t seen him since yesterday’s breakfast.”

“How can he survive so long without you?” Amari teased. Morrison gave her a cheeky smile.

“Good question. But he’s alive, he answered my texts this morning around three. I just thought he’d be up by now. I’ve never seen him sleep after six, even on a day off. It’s weird.”

“He probably was up late last night,” Liao said without compromising what he really knew. “I’ve seen light in his office at all hours of the night this week.”

“Same,” Lindholm snorted. “Does he sleep at all?”

“He does,” Morrison chuckled, “and he snores if he’s on his back, like everybody.”

“Good to know he’s like us, mere mortals,” Lindholm grumbled. “What’s in the bag?”

“Candies.”

“For Gabe?” Amari smirked.

“Yep,” Morrison said, not even registering the tease. “It’s his birthday tomorrow, but once the mission starts, it won’t matter, so I’m giving him that today.”

“Do we do that?” Lindholm asked. “Do we do birthdays and presents?”

“I doubt he’ll accept anything from you guys,” Morrison warned. “He doesn’t know you enough to be gracious about it. Maybe next year.”

“If there’s a next year,” Lindholm snorted.

“Of course there will be,” Morrison smiled with confidence. “By the way, my birthday is January fifth and I’ll gladly accept any present.”

“The thirteenth of March,” Amari said, raising her hand.

“I’m also of the thirteenth!” Wilhelm beamed. “But of April!” They high-fived.

“September twenty-second,” Lindholm added.

When Liao didn’t share, everybody started looking at him with insistence.

“May the fourth,” he grumbled behind his coffee cup. His teammates looked at him with big, excited eyes for a second. “Don’t,” he warned.

“Don’t what?” Lindholm smirked. “ _Be with you_ on the joke?” And he laughed at that while the others shared a few chuckles.

“Hilarious,” Liao replied.

It made Lindholm laugh even harder. Well, at least it had eased a bit of the tension, Liao thought bitterly as he watched his teammates break into a laughing feat at his expanse. He could make them laugh if that helped.

_Can you lie?_

Liao snorted softly for himself. Yes he could.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wolf 359 is an awesome podcast I've been binging at work. It's been adapted into a TV show in this universe because I can say so.


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